


Undertow

by lilithenaltum



Series: Undertow: An IronPrincess Story [1]
Category: Black Panther (2018), Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Age Difference, Bad Decisions, Bruce Banner is Tired, Bruce/Jane - Freeform, Bucky/Shuri but it’s not fun, But not really. They’re actually twin flames, Discussion of Abortion, Eventual Relationships, Extramarital Affairs, F/M, I'm Going to Hell, Idiots in Love, Infidelity, IronPrincess, Lust, Pepper Potts Deserves Better, Post-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie), Postpartum Depression, Science Bros, Sorta Happy Ending, Soulmates, Suicide Attempt, Survivor Guilt, Tony Stark Has Issues, Tony Stark is a Baby Daddy, Tony/Pepper - Freeform, karma kicks Tony and Shuri’s asses later, pre-snap Bucky/Shuri
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-06-27
Updated: 2019-05-13
Packaged: 2019-05-29 06:50:23
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 110,789
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15067538
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lilithenaltum/pseuds/lilithenaltum
Summary: In the aftermath of The Snap, Tony Stark begins a torrid affair with Queen Shuri of Wakanda, and the consequences of their actions will change both their worlds. This is a story of fate, bad choices, and the burn between two very different but surprisingly similar people.Set post Infinity War. Not canon compliant.





	1. as they kiss, consume

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _I've been baptized by your voice that screams_   
>  _From deep beneath the cold black water that's_   
>  _Half as high as heaven_   
>  _Half as clear as reason_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> part I: riptide 
> 
> On the long list of bad decisions that Tony has made in his life, seducing the young queen of Wakanda might very well be the worst. It takes two to tango, though, and the rules never did apply to Shuri.
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> Story title and summary lyrics taken from [_"Undertow"_](https://youtu.be/A46dVwpd71o) by Tool.

_April, 2018_

.

.

.

.

The first year is the hardest.

 

It's bad enough that he had to watch Peter disappear; when he makes it back to Earth, he has to bring the news to May, who screams, then slaps and hits him mindlessly in her grief. “Why was it him and not you?” she wails, and he doesn’t have an answer because he doesn’t know. It isn’t fair, none of this is, and he thinks of the half patched gouge in his gut, sutured by Nebula on the ride home and healing at an alarmingly slow pace. He thinks of how he shouldn’t even be here, and that he shouldn’t feel so relieved that Pepper answered the phone the second he’d come back into Earth’s atmosphere, or that Happy is somehow is still alive and that Bruce still breathes.

 

_Peter didn’t make it._

 

Tony flirts with the idea of suicide. He wants to stand from the tallest building in New York and plummet from the top to the bottom and hope to god he passes out before he hits the pavement. He’d probably deserve to feel that, though, he thinks, as May cries herself to sleep in his arms and a trickle of blood slips down his belly, his wound reopening as he fights his own tears. He doesn’t get to cry for this. His punishment is to keep this all inside and find a way to fix this, because he owes this to May Parker and he owes this to Peter.

 

His resolve is bolstered by the sharp pain of knowing that Bucky didn’t make it and neither did Sam and that’s two people that Steve has lost in one day, two people he didn’t care for one way or another, but that’s neither here nor there now. They were humans, they were his people, they deserved so much more, too. So he sucks it up and finally gives Steve more than radio silence when the Captain makes his way home to New York.

 

“Only staying a few days,” Steve says, bleary eyed and so worn down that Tony can feel the remainder of his heart shatter into bits and pieces. He still has Pepper and Rhodey ( _thank god, oh thank god_ ) and Bruce and by some extension, he guesses, Thor. Natasha stands beside Steve like a beacon, like she hasn’t lost so much already though he knows she has. He will forever marvel at her strength. The look she gives him is one of world weary solidity, the face of a woman who has nothing left to lose and will do anything to keep what she has. She has Steve, though Tony doesn’t know if he knows that he has Natasha. He hopes he finds out soon.

 

“As long as you need,” Tony says, quietly, because though the world outside his compound is crumbling into ash (like Peter...he didn’t feel good, he didn’t want to go-) he doesn’t feel like he needs to say much of anything. Instead, he locks himself in his lab and he and Bruce obsessively pour over anything and everything they have left that could possibly fix this.

 

Chaos before had been mostly a word to the rest of the world, but to Tony it was an everyday reality. No one really knows how to function in a society where half the population is gone, disappeared in some unknown ether that nobody can name. And yet, humanity is nothing if not resilient. There are missing persons fliers floating around the near Apocalyptic landscape of New York, and Tony wonders how much longer this tiny semblance of order can stand before total panic breaks out and a purge starts.

 

And it’s sometime around the time that they realize they can’t do this alone, that he’ll need every last bit of help he can find (the space-time continuum is needlessly complicated, especially with the loss of half the universe’s inhabitants). So he swallows his pride and puts out a call, timidly at first, to Wakanda because he's been told the world’s smartest woman lives there, and if anyone could help them figure this out it would be her.

 

And for months, he hears nothing.

 

In the meantime, he does what he can. He tries to reach out to Steve, keeps tabs on Thor (who has literally lost everything and everyone save a few hundred people and a beautiful woman named Valkyrie, who shows up at the compound looking as haggard as he feels and who breaks down upon hearing that Reindeer Games had bit the dust). No one can find Clint, least of all Natasha, who’d gone to the farm and found it eerily empty.  He mostly only spends his time with Bruce or Pepper and does what he can to comfort Rhodey when the nightmares get too bad.

 

( _I couldn’t find him, Tony. Sam...I couldn’t...what if he went alone?_ )

 

And he sends message after message to Wakanda, in the hopes that maybe, possibly, the new queen will grant him even a morsel of her time. It’s all he asks (he knows he really needs more), but he doesn’t expect that much, even. Wakandan borders have been closed, locked tight and shut indefinitely and no one hears word of anything ever changing on that front. Doesn’t mean he can’t try.

 

He marries Pepper one cold January morning in 2019, with Wong, Happy, Bruce and Rhodey as witnesses and a solemn Justice of the Peace to officiate. There’s no celebration after. There’s not much but a small dinner and then back to the lab, while Rhodey works with what’s left of the United States Government to keep a little bit of order to the country. Steve sends his regards a week after, just a simple congratulations, but nothing more. No one actually knows where Steve is, except perhaps Thor, but he’s in Norway, bunkering down and doing what he can to be a king to a displaced, grieving people and either way, he’s not talking. And honestly, Tony figures that if Steve Rogers wants to be found, he will be.

 

It doesn’t really matter, not for the months before he gets the little blip of a message from Wakanda. Truth be told, not much matters before then. It’s the first real ray of sunlight he sees in this dismal dark that is his new life. And he grasps on to it like it will slip from his hands, dropping everything he’s got to take the quinjet to Wakanda. He is at her beck and call now, because she is all that he has. She is all any of them have now.

 

He realizes on the flight over, Pepper at home and Bruce in tow, that he’d actually given thought of meeting this genius princess once before. It seemed so long ago now, and so silly-Peter gushing about the mysterious girl, tales of her intelligence and the work she’d done circulating in only the most exclusive circles. No one even knew what she looked like, this Shuri. She was sheltered and isolated, a hidden secret treasure. But there were whispers, here and there, little bits of information coming out in the scientific community as Wakanda’s borders opened bit by painstakingly slow bit.

 

He hates that Peter wouldn’t get to meet her now. And he wonders if he ever would have if none of this would have happened.

 

He’s greeted on the tarmac by six glowering Dora Milaje, all beautiful and fierce, and so incredibly intimidating that he almost hesitates on leaving the quinjet. But there is a dark, gorgeous face staring him down like a lioness and he knows he can’t renege on this meeting.

 

He’s made so much of a fuss to see her; he may as well go along with it now. And Bruce’s hand is warm and kind on his back, so he launches forward, opening his mouth to say something, anything.

 

“Dr. Banner,” the woman in front of him says, her eyes still on his, her face softening just a bit when they sweep across to Bruce. Bruce gives her the best approximation of a smile that he can and nods once.

 

“General Okoye.”

 

Tony doesn’t speak a word during this short little interaction; he’s almost amused at how silent he’s become in the last almost year. Any other time and he’d be rambling on and making slight quips but this is too dire a situation, so he lets Bruce do the heavy lifting. He swallows whatever fears are left in him (what does he have to be afraid of anymore? He’s seen the entire world turn to shit before his eyes) and follows these silent women from the tarmac and into the coolness of the empty palace.

 

It’s so quiet here. Tony thinks he may possibly have a panic attack if there isn’t any noise, so he walks a little bit harder, shuffles along though he doesn’t need to so that his feet scuffle against the polished marble flooring. The architecture of the place is gorgeous, the ceilings massive and made of rock he couldn’t name. Geology wasn’t his forte, anyway.

 

Bruce knows what he’s doing, and leans in close, his voice barely a whisper. It’s better than nothing, and Tony drinks in the sound of it as he walks.

 

“Okoye saw him turn to dust,” Bruce says softly, glancing up at the formidable general, her footsteps sure and deliberate. If she hears him, she gives no inclination that she does.

 

“The king?”

 

His friend nods, an expression on his face that Tony has seen more times in the last several months then he wanted to. It’s an odd mix of pity and pain and despair-partly for Okoye and partly for him- and he hates it, but he can’t do anything about it. Not yet, he can’t. He wonders if he ever will be able to.

 

“Tell her I feel her pain, then. If you say anything to her again, I mean.”

 

Bruce nods once more and then they round the corner to a very large, very open room that reminds Tony of something from a Game of Thrones episode. It overlooks the city, bright and beautiful though there’s a strange sort of lull to it that reminds Tony that half of the people in this country have too disappeared while the other half sit and suffer for want of absolution or some sort of explanation. He wishes he could make do with simple closure, but he knows too much. He needs to fix this.

 

It takes him a long moment of surveying his surroundings before he realizes that Okoye is talking and that he should be listening. But when he follows everyone’s line of sight and settles his gaze on the throne, he can’t hear what anyone is saying once again.

 

He’s staring at, quite possibly, the most beautiful girl he’s ever seen.

 

This is the queen, he realizes. This is the genius princess that Peter had been so excited to know about. This is the smartest woman (person, probably) in the world, a ruler and survivor at the tender age of 20, with sad, haunting eyes and cheekbones that could cut glass. She is stunning, this queen. And she breaks another little piece of his heart.

 

“Dr. Banner. Mr. Stark,” she says, in a voice deceptively soft. There’s steel there, though it’s a bit too brittle for his liking. He has no real strength to give her, but he wants to.

 

He isn’t sure if he should kneel or not, but Bruce isn’t kneeling, so he opts to stand, demure and humble. It isn’t hard to do that now. “Your Majesty,” he intones, in a voice he hopes is neutral and respectful at the same time. It strikes him that he’s already working so hard to impress a child young enough to have been his, and he nearly laughs. But he keeps it all swallowed down inside, in the pit of his belly, and his smothered laughter joins the butterflies that flutter about down below when she slides off that too big throne and steps up to him.

 

He’s not a tall man. He’s about average, he knows, something that never really gave him any pause before. He doesn’t mind women taller anyway; that general has at least three inches on him and she’s a stunner if there ever was one. And of course his wife is taller than he, long and lean and elegant. Pepper had always beguiled him with her height.

 

But this slip of a girl is smaller and shorter and so tiny, and he feels almost like a giant standing in front of her. Somehow, it doesn’t feel quite right. He wants to kneel before her, if his knees will allow it, and shrink down so she knows he knows his place. She seems content to stare up at him with those dark, sad eyes, eyes that have seen much too much in such a short life. He thinks that if he could, he’d take the sadness from her eyes and draw it into himself, store it away with all his aches and regrets and the sharp pain of failing Peter and of failing May.

 

She studies him for what feels like ages, but Tony doesn’t mind. And then she speaks once more, and he’s lost in the lilt of her voice and the curiosity on her lovely face and he feels something inside him turn, and he’s terrified of it.

 

“Come with me to my laboratory. We can speak there.”

 

* * *

 

His first thought, upon entering her esteemed laboratory, is how much Peter would have loved to see this. And that makes him hurt enough that he can only stop in the middle of the broad expansive room and grasp onto something solid. Bruce is two paces behind him so he settles for the glass top computer desk to his left, and tries not to stumble into the chair beside it. There is no one but the three of them in this laboratory, Shuri’s Dora detail outside waiting patiently. Tony feels like he’s intruding for some odd reason, no matter the invitation. It dawns on him as the young queen watches his footsteps that he probably is.

 

“I probably haven’t found anything any more useful than you two have,” she says after minutes of bone aching quiet. The pain he feels from the lack of sound seems to evaporate with each word she says. He wants to close his eyes and drown in her voice, her accent, in the way her mouth glides over the English language. He wonders how many languages she knows. He makes a note to ask her sometime soon.

 

“Whatever you’ve found is useful, trust me,” Bruce says. “We’ve got nothing to go on and we at least know you’ve studied one of the stones.”

 

“Yes. Its molecular structure is all we have so far, though who's to say if that will help us any. But perhaps you’re right. It is something. Though I’m not entirely certain if that would do much to help us in _this_ endeavor.”

 

Tony keeps his mouth closed until that moment because he doesn’t really know what to say. But he’s wondering what approach she’s going for because all he and Bruce had come up with was trying to replicate those stones and maybe somehow undoing the damage that had been done. Whether that was possible was so far up in the air, it was no longer in the atmosphere.

 

“And your endeavor would be…what exactly?”

 

She looks at him like he’s daft and he feels like he probably is. He’s reminded of something Bruce had told him on the flight over, that this girl in front of him had invented a suit so advanced it made his look like child’s play, and had perfected this technology only a few weeks past her 18th birthday. It makes him feel stupid and stirs awe in him that dries his mouth.

 

But she isn’t cruel, though she could be, and no one would truly blame her. She has lost a brother and friends, no doubt. Bruce told him whispers of how she’d screamed after hearing her brother had turned to ashes, and how she’d shrank inside herself learning that Sergeant Barnes had as well. He doesn’t quite know what that relationship is about, but all clues point to rather close.

 

No, Shuri offers him a patient smile, though it’s strained, and gestures for him to follow her. Bruce keeps his eyes on Tony, seemingly looking for signs of something but Tony isn’t cognizant of much else but the soft sway of her hips and the hum that passes around the lab. And it’s a massive, sprawling structure, one he wishes he could get lost in for a few days. He hopes she’ll allow him that much at least, the chance to wander about her space and soak in her knowledge like a sponge.

 

“It has taken me an embarrassingly long time to even get this together,” she says, as they round a corner and walk down a flight of obsidian stairs. In the middle of the room is a large glass structure, much like a cage, that is hooked up to a myriad of wires and tubes. Whatever it is, it’s most definitely still in the preliminary phases, but it’s also so advanced looking that Tony can’t help but wonder how long it would have taken him to come up with even this. Years, probably, he knows, though she’s done this in only months.

 

“And…well, what is it?” Bruce asks, a little shyly. Shuri tilts her head and presses a small palm to the glass, sighing painfully as she does.

 

“It’s a time machine. Or, it will be, if I can figure out how to get it working.”

 

“Is that why you finally answered us?” Tony asks, his eyes crawling over the contraption and then over to the glowing, dark purple stone being mined outside her laboratory. Vibranium. He’s never truly seen any in the flesh, and for a very long moment, he has the urge to ask for entrance inside the mines if only to touch it. But Shuri’s eyes are on him once more and there is a hurt there that makes him feel ashamed of something like that though he’s not entirely sure why.

 

“They brought a war to my doorstep, Mr. Stark,” she says, and he wants to crawl underneath something and hide. “They brought a war and now my brother is gone. My mother doesn’t leave her room and my friends are-“

 

She cuts off what she wants to say and swallows, presses her lips together and starts over. He wonders if she’s thinking of Bucky right now, and he wonders just how close is close.

 

“None of us will be able to do this alone,” she continues, and he nods slowly because she’s right. Of course she is. “So against the advice of my council I invited you here because if we’re going to fix this, we will have to work together. You and I and Dr. Banner and anyone else you can think of that can help us.” Shuri taps her nails on the machine and waits for the thoughts inside his head to stop swirling about. It’s a little unnerving that she seems able to read his mind, but Tony is something of an open book. And it’s gotten worse after what people call the Happening. He can’t hide what he’s feeling from anyone anymore. He’s going to have to get better at that, he thinks, because already, Bruce is looking at him oddly as he stares at the queen, his nails picking at his cuticles nervously. Why does she make him so nervous?

 

“I’m down to doing whatever it takes to get this right again,” he tells her finally, and she lets out a slow breath, almost as if she’d been anticipating that he’d decline. He can’t imagine why in the world she’d think that. “I’m either gonna fix this shit or I’m gonna die trying.” She doesn’t even blink at the expletive. She only nods once, firmly, and straightens her shoulders, looking all the world like the royalty she is. There is still that pain in her eyes, the kind he knows is in his and will never quite go away, but now there is the barest hint of hope and he warms at the idea that somehow or another they are going to get back all that they’ve lost.

 

On the flight home, he stares out the window over the endless blue of the Atlantic Ocean and dreams of a day he can tell Peter Parker that the girl he’d fallen in love with through a Buzzfeed article had helped saved his life.

* * *

 

This is how it goes for a time. Society knits itself back together bit by bit while the three of them correspond back and forth between New York and Birnin Zana, little pieces of a puzzle coming into slow focus. It’s frustrating that it’s taken them this long to get this far, but he realizes they are working with a problem so complex that it would have taken anyone else ages to figure out. He’s grateful she’s decided to share what she knows with him the way she has, or otherwise he’d still be fumbling about in the dark for some half brained idea of recreating the stones. He knows now that no one can, that those damned jewels were made on a slimmest once in an eon chance and that nothing will ever replicate them. But that doesn’t mean that wrinkles in time can’t be made so that they can jump back and forth about and try to stop what happened from happening before it does. At the very least, perhaps they can alter the course of events so that they win in the end. All of this is simple enough, though getting there is going to take all he has.

 

What he doesn’t expect is for that little crush he’d developed to grow and fester. He’s a married man, luckier than most in that his wife is more than competent and capable and loyal, and she is the love of his life and the beat of his heart. He tells himself this every time that Shuri calls him, her face popping up onto the screens of his laboratory as she gives him some sort of hint about how the machine she’s building is coming along. She makes him laugh in spite of the neverending crushing weight that rests in his chest, keeps him on his toes, spurs him on to spend night upon night searching and digging and testing the very boundaries of his brain.

 

Tony knows that her brilliance surpasses his own, and that thrills him in a way he’s never felt before.

 

But this is all that is, a crush, an infatuation of the mind. It’s the same sort of infatuation he’d felt for Bruce once upon a time, a brief burst of intense passion that had swept through him at finding someone who could challenge him. And Bruce had, still does, in so many ways. His love for Pepper is something steady and solid and sure, while his love for Bruce is a friendship crafted on like minds and a silent sort of sameness that he’s never quite found with anyone else. It’s why he felt such kinship with both Harley and with Peter, he knows. So he doesn’t give this little crush a thought and doesn’t bother tampering down what he feels when he sees her because he knows it’ll pass and mellow soon.

 

He’s a married man. And within months of meeting the queen of Wakanda, he finds out he is soon to be a father, too.

 

Pepper gives him the pregnancy test one night in June while he’s sweeping through an influx of files that Shuri had sent over. Her smile is the tentative, delicate kind, one almost afraid of bringing a child into a world just barely holding on by a thread, but it’s something the both of them have wanted so much that all thoughts of what could be and what isn’t fall from his mind and he has something to look forward to and live for. He kisses his wife deeply and rediscovers how much he loves her and cradles her close to him for days, almost terrified of the little life that’s baking in Pepper’s oven. This is more than he deserves, he knows, and he’s almost terrified that something cosmic and karmic will come to fuck this up.

 

If Shuri’s reaction to the news-given to her a little offhanded and mentioned during a conference by way of sparking conversation-is subdued, he pays it no mind. At least, he tries not to. But he doesn’t miss the subtleties in her voice when she tells him good evening when they disconnect, nor does he miss how she avoids him for days afterward.

 

“You think maybe she’s thinking of what she could have had with someone else?” he asks Bruce one day, curious to know why she'd be upset about Pepper's pregnancy. Bruce shrugs, completely engrossed in the files he’s still reading through and humming every so often as he finds bits of information imperative to what they’re doing.

 

“Could be. I wouldn’t know, honestly. I mean, you talk to her more than I do. I’m just here in the background taking up space.”

 

Tony snorts at that, because if Tony and Shuri are spearheading this work then Bruce is the backbone of the entire operation. They couldn’t get much done without him.

 

“Yeah, okay, well I’m just wondering. The rumors, you know? Humor me. I’m being nosy.”

 

“About Bucky Barnes?” Bruce shrugs his shoulders, but there’s a look on his face that says he knows a little more than he’s letting on. “All I know is that the guy was pretty ride or die for Wakanda. Take that how you will.” Bruce clicks on another file and starts skimming through this one as well, quiet for a long enough time that Tony can dwell on what he doesn’t know about the queen’s supposed relationship with Barnes.

 

“Why don’t you just ask her?’ he hears, after what feels like ages of silence. Tony turns to Bruce and frowns, as if the very idea is absurd. And maybe it is. He could volunteer all the information about himself that he wanted, but he didn’t expect the queen to.

 

“You really just expect me to call her and be like, ‘Hey, your Majesty, just wondering…what went on between you and Steve Roger’s hound dog?’ Not sure if she’d really go for it.”

 

“Not if you do it that way,” Bruce says with an absent minded smirk. “But she likes you. More than she likes me, I know that.”

 

She did like him, he knew. He wouldn’t argue over whom she liked the most because he was fairly certain she had a softer spot for Bruce than him. And she was mostly polite while Rhodey was around and a little distant if Pepper was ever in the lab when she called. But when it was just the two of them…he thinks now of the first time he’d seen her smile, a real honest to god smile that lit her entire face up and made her eyes sparkle and he feels his heart skip a beat.

 

A crush. An intellectual crush. That’s all that was.

 

And yet, he wonders if he ever anticipated the sound of Bruce’s voice so acutely or if he actively chattered away just to make Bruce smile the way he does with Shuri. She makes him feel so stupid sometimes, and he loves it. She stuns him and he can’t get enough of it. He wants nothing more than spend all _his_ time taking up all _her_ time, selfish as that is.

 

“She tolerates me,” Tony says finally, hoping it sounds convincing to his own ears. He thinks if he says it enough that he’ll convince himself of it. He can’t think of any real reason she would truly like him, anyway. She’s been avoiding him for the last week or so, so he figures maybe the newness of their sorta kinda relationship has worn thin and now she’s just in this to win this. That bothers him more than it should.

 

“Yeah, okay,” Bruce says, dismissing the subject and going back to his file. And for a while, there’s only the queen’s notes and the soft buzz of the music in the background. But he gets a call from Wakanda, the first in nine days, though he hasn’t been counting. And then he thinks that it’s been fifteen days since Pepper found out she was expecting and fifteen days since he’d been thinking of his life in terms of later for the first time in a year and a half.

 

“Bruce,” Shuri says in that way she does, as he answers the calls and gives her a friendly smile. Tony even likes the way she says Bruce’s name. It’s ridiculous, is what it is, and he’s a little angry that he’ll take these snippets of her if that’s all he can get. He wonders childishly how long he can ignore her before she calls to him. She has a way of saying his name that makes every inch of his skin prickle and he’s dying to hear it.

 

Stark. She only ever calls him Stark most of the time, but that’s enough.

 

“You been busy?” Bruce asks, playing the part of pleasant host because Tony has slide out of his seat and is hunting down a glass of whiskey. He rarely drinks these days, but he needs one now.

 

“I have been particularly fruitful, I think. I’m sending over more of my notes but I’ll need one of you to come and see what I have in person.”

 

“Yeah? That sounds…wow, that sounds like a good thing-Tony!”

 

“Yeah?”

 

“C’mere, Queen Shuri’s on the phone, she’s got-“

 

“I heard her.”

 

There’s a bit of silence on her end and then a chuckle that makes his blood heat up. “Anthony is in a mood, I assume?” She says it loud enough that he can hear and not just as a joke between Bruce and herself, but Tony doesn’t notice his friend’s shaking laughter or the teasing in her tone because she’d called him by his entire first name and he hadn’t anticipated what that would do to him.

 

“You realize,” he says, swaggering back to the large screen she’s on and narrowing his eyes as he stares at her beautiful face, “that I charge people for calling me that.”

 

“I have more than enough to pay you for calling you that,” she says with a grin that he knows is probably only meant for him. “Name a price.”  Bruce, thank god, isn’t paying what she’s doing much attention.

 

She’s flirting with him. Blatantly and opening flirting, and it should make him feel guilty and he should probably stop this because a one sided _intellectual_ crush is one thing but a flirtation with a girl queen who could be his _daughter_ and who isn’t his _wife_ is something else entirely.

 

“Hmmm, it gets steep,” he says, hoping that sounds less like flirting and more like only friends (acquaintances, coworkers, partners?). “Starts in the millions, goes up every few hours, you know. There’s a premium depending on demand, the time of day, that kinda thing.”

 

She chuckles again and raises a brow.

 

“You are saying this as if I don’t have the money to buy you _and_ your name,” and he shudders a bit because she does. He knows she does, and it does something to him.

 

“Oh I’m more than aware. Look, about whatever you’ve got up your sleeve…you want Bruce to come by and maybe see about-“

 

“I’d like you to come, Anthony,” she says, and there’s not much room for argument in that. “There’s something I wish to discuss with you in person.” It sounds so damned formal and professional, the switch in her voice giving him whiplash. One second, she’s practically melting him like butter and the next she’s getting him together like a school teacher.

 

“Uh…any particular day you need me there?”

 

“Tomorrow, if that isn’t an issue.”

 

“Tomorrow.” Tomorrow is no problem, though he had promised Pepper he’d try to come with her to her doctor’s appointment tomorrow. He’s sure he can do that and then hop on the quinjet to Wakanda at the same time. So he lets her go with the promise to see her tomorrow evening at the latest and scrubs his face as Bruce takes the elevator to the first floor and to the kitchen for a late dinner. He fights the urge to slip his hands beneath the waistband of his pants and closes his eyes to the thought of dark skin and his name on her lips.

 

* * *

Steve Rogers is there waiting on the tarmac when he lands in Wakanda the next evening. He shouldn’t be surprised, but he is, and is a little happy to see him. There is no hug between the two of them, but there’s a mutual understanding and Tony watches Steve for little signs and ticks, wondering if his grief is the same as Tony’s has been. Steve has always been different, the mirror of Tony himself, so he’s not too disappointed to find that Captain America wears the weight of the world a lot differently than Iron Man.

 

“Her Majesty thinks they’ve finally found a breakthrough,” Steve says quietly, as they walk through the too still palace toward what will be Tony’s room for a few days. “She’s got Ms. Foster working with her as well-“

 

“Thor’s ex?”

 

“The very one. You know, she lost Selvig and Darcy both.” Tony doesn’t know how he still has heart enough to clench, but it does and he lets out a slow, sad breath.

 

“How’s she doing?” he asks. He didn’t know Jane that well but the little he did know of her, he liked. She’d seemed like a good person.

 

“As well as any of us, considering. She’s got something going on with Thor and the Valkyrie, apparently. I didn’t pry too much.”

 

“Nat?”

 

“Still hunting for Clint.” Steve’s voice is strained, though he works to cover it, and Tony thinks perhaps that this hunt was not something Steve had approved of. But Natasha is stubborn, more so than Rogers probably is and once she had her mind set on something, she never let go. “Possibly a futile attempt, but I couldn’t stop her.”

 

“She wouldn’t have stopped you,” Tony says, unsure exactly of why he’s defending Natasha’s choices. Steve’s probably right and Clint had probably turned to ash with the rest of them. But he understands why she needs to look. There’d been no evidence, no clue, nothing. He’s reminded once again of the need for closure and envies anyone that can find it.

 

“I know. It’s why I let her go.”

 

They’re quiet for the rest of the walk to his room, and Steve shows him to his door, nodding his goodnight as Tony slips inside the dark bedroom. He won’t see the queen till the morning, as it’s too late for any sort of meeting right now and he needed rest before he could dive headfirst into theories and calculations and equations. He hadn’t packed much, just a few changes of clothes, a few toiletries. He carries his own bag inside and tosses it to the bed in the middle of the large, spacious room, flops down on top of the sheets and closes his eyes for a long moment.

 

And then he hears her voice once more in his head, saying his name the way she had and he lets it ride, lets his imagination take over. His body is so tensed; he can feel his muscles quiver beneath his hand as he slides his fingers down his shirt and into his jeans. He’ll give himself this one time, he thinks, just this once to get this out his system and out his blood because he knows if he sees her without the pressure of want weighing him down, he can get over this little crush he’s got going.

 

Dark eyes come to mind when he grazes the soft hairs that trail down from his belly. Lips, perfect and plush and smiling spring forth when he unzips his jeans and lets out a soft breath, pulling his cock free of his boxers and slides a shaking hand up the shaft of it. He pauses at the tip and squeezes tightly, just tight enough to hurt a bit because this is a punishment in some ways, even if it’s some sort of absolution. He has a feeling this will get messy, so he lifts his hips and shimmies the jeans down, takes off his underwear and tugs off his shirt until he’s naked on the bed, legs splayed wide and nerves tingling with anticipation.

 

 _Just this once_ , he tells himself, as he spits into his hand and starts a slow, torturous stroke. _Just this once._ He imagines how wet she’d be, how tight and hot and good. He thinks of her skin and how soft it probably is and how beautiful it would be, on top of him like this and wrapped around him, and he lets out the first gasp of many. His hand works faster, just enough that he can hear the slick of his spit against his cock and he pretends that it’s the sound of her pussy clenching around him. He can almost hear her pant against his ear, can feel her small hands on his chest.

 

She’s a vivid, living fantasy in his mind and he starts to fuck his hand, harder and desperate so that he reaches his peak before the guilt can creep in. In his head, he’s younger, lean body and smooth skin, his grin like a razorblade and his hands sure and steady. In his head, he has thoroughly enraptured her and seduced her and she begs him for more, for harder, scratches her nails down his chest and leaves welts, gasps out his name-his whole name-like it’s her salvation.

 

He cums so hard, sticky and hot against his belly, that it knocks his breath loose and he lies back in the bed spent, the whisper of a softly accented _Anthony_ echoing in head.

 

* * *

 

Jane Foster is in the lab with them that next morning and between the back and forth of equations and what seems to actually be some sort of progress, he watches the easy, almost familial exchange between the queen and the other woman. It’s comforting, even though Jane’s eyes do something odd to his chest and make him want to turn away at every chance. Hers are a different kind of haunted; he makes a note to ask Shuri later what her story is. Had she held her best friend in her arms as she died? Did she watch her foster father turn to dust with no way to stop it?

 

Regardless of her pain, she’s as kind and friendly as ever and she welcomes him into the fold, bringing him up to speed on what they’ve been developing. The machine is near done, the axioms are closer to being actual theorems instead, and if this works (and he’s almost certain it will, because the two most intelligent women he’s ever met are in this laboratory right now, making this happen) someone will be able to travel back in time and fix what was broken.

 

Maybe.

 

“The only issue with this,” Jane says, in that rambling way she does when she’s this close to coming into something big, “is that on the molecular level, everything may not come back together the way it should.”

 

Tony makes a face, he thinks, but doesn’t bother saying anything about that little hiccup. Regardless of what has to be done, he knows he’ll be the one to go back. Molecules be damned. It’s a small price to pay. And as if she’s reading his mind, once again, Shuri glances his way and stares at him hard, almost daring him not to even entertain the idea.

 

“We will sort that little problem out,” Shuri says, more assured than Tony thinks she probably feels, but it placates Jane and then she’s telling him more about the fabric of time and how to navigate across it, theoretically. Some of this goes over his head, so he has to ask for clarity and it, once again, humbles him. But he finds himself enjoying the hours they spend and before long, they have worked past lunch and half into dinner and Tony is invigorated but tired.

 

“Only a few kinks to iron out, honestly,” he tells Bruce during a break to get food. “Just think, within days we can probably get this baby up and running and then-”

 

“Don’t jump ahead of yourself,” Bruce warns him, and Tony stops sucking salt from his fingers to listen to the cues in his friend’s voice. There’s something there that Tony doesn’t like. “I’m not saying she can’t get us back. I’m saying that messing with time is tricky business. In theory. No one’s ever really done it before, I don’t guess.”

 

“Okay, but Jane kind of accounted for that? I mean, we’ve got to do a bit of scoping and figure out which points are safest to travel to, that sort of thing. We’re not just gonna jump headfirst into the past and try undoing everything. It’s a process.”

 

“Good. Cause I’d really hate it if you attempted to right something and made it worse.”

 

Bruce pauses long enough for Tony to understand exactly what he’s saying and he swallows his food painfully. He could go back in time and stop Thanos...but undo Peter’s birth, too. He could possibly keep the stones apart and attempt to prevent the Happening from ever taking place, but something could fuck up and he could erase Pepper from existence.

 

And then his stomach sinks at the thought that he could get stuck too far back and not survive and that whatever they’d done to try and fix this would all be for naught because it is an endless loop of losing and dying, repeat, repeat, repeat.

 

“You and I both. So I’m just gonna let Shuri and Jane handle this and uh, you know. Observe. Never was good with time and space and all that stuff.”

 

Truth be told, Tony’s only ever really been good with computations and mechanics, he knows, but he doesn’t have to say it. And once again, he feels incredibly small, but it’s becoming a familiar feeling and it’s oddly satisfying. He isn’t so special after all and that’s a relief.

 

They talk and work late into the night until Jane’s near to falling asleep. She’s resting, hand on cheek, at the large glass table as music plays and Shuri’s impressive computer zips through equation after equation. Her eyes droop and her body is slouched, not at all the posture of a queen, but she still holds on, as if she doesn’t finish this tonight it will all have slipped away in the morning. Tony’s a little nervous about saying anything; she’s been a bit standoffish all day, though he’d initially blamed that on outside company. And now, he wonders if it’s just him.

 

“Someone told me once that we all work better if we’ve had our rest.”

 

Shuri turns her head and blinks at him, slowly and methodically, mapping his face and reading his expression and body language, and it’s only then that she responds.

 

“I know my limits, Mr. Stark,” she says, her voice devoid of much else but the slightest of rebukes. It rankles him in a way that he knows is dangerous and he bites his tongue to keep from saying anything else. Instead, he shrugs and moves back to the holographic display, tweaks a few things and ignores the yawns that start from her end a few minutes later.

 

Another hour, and Jane is dozing on the table now. Shuri calls for one of her Dora to come and escort Ms. Foster from the lab to the palace, then pulls out a few beers from her mini fridge and slides one over his way wordlessly. Tony plays it cool and tries not to expect much at all, though he offers her an appreciative glance when he pops the top. She hasn’t said a thing to him within the hour and he’s not sure if he should push her buttons or not. Correspondence via video is one thing; actually being in her presence is another. She’s got an otherworldly kind of aura about her, one that throws him off balance.

 

Shuri slides back into her chair when the Dora leave with a half asleep Jane and rubs her neck, stretching her legs out in front of her and staring off into some empty space, her own half finished beer at her elbow. It’s just the two of them now, and Tony watches her for a long while, before giving up on the holo and lying back on the cool floor, taking one last pull from the stout beer. He needs sleep, at least an hours worth, and maybe a sandwich or two. He’s gotten too old to be pulling all nighters. When he throws his arm over his eyes and tries to level his breathing, he hears her shift about in the chair and he swears he feels her eyes on his skin. It’s unsettling.

 

“Did you need anything, your Majesty?” he asks. He fights to keep his slight annoyance out of his voice, but he’s pretty sure he hasn’t been too successful. She stares him down like he’s an insect of some sort.

 

“What did you do when you got here last night?”

 

Tony opens his mouth for a moment, and then closes it because he’s this close to confessing that he spent ten minutes imagining her riding him within an inch of his life as he jacked off. Instead, he reformulates his response so that’s carefully crafted, perfectly respectable. Normal, even.

 

“I went to sleep. Long flight, you know.”

 

Shuri watches him for another long moment before she slips from the chair and makes her way over to where he lies, standing above him with her arms crossed and a scowl on her pretty face.

 

“Are you sure that is all?”

 

“Unless I’ve picked up sleep walking, then yeah. Is that a problem? Was I supposed to come see you last night?” He’d thought she’d already be in bed by that hour. There wasn’t anything proper about approaching the queen at damn near midnight.

 

“No.” She lets out a hard sigh and presses her lips together, then folds her legs and flops down beside him on the hard floor. “No, you...I just…” She shakes her head and for a moment she looks so young, barely a woman now, just a tired, scared little girl. He wants to pull her into his lap and tell her it’ll all be alright soon.

 

It will. He knows it has to be.

 

But he doesn’t do anything, except to keep his eyes on her and wait for her to continue to speak. And with no one else around but the two of them, it’s like she can’t stop talking then, rambling and jumbling her words up in a rush to get it all out.

 

“If I don’t fix this, if I don’t go back and change this, then what will become of us? I sit on a very precarious ledge right now, factions wanting to dispose me and the entire outside world desperate to take what we have. I can’t keep everyone stable alone. I need my brother back and I…”

 

“You know, it doesn’t hurt to ask for help.”

 

She sniffles, wiping hastily at her face so the tears don’t fall too far. “Took me a while to understand that,” she confesses, giving him a half-hearted smile. But it’s more than what he’d expected and he can’t help but smile back. “It’s why I finally broke down and opened communication.”

 

“You got my first messages, then?”

 

She nods. “I hid in the lab and avoided everything and everyone for a solid month before I snapped out of it and took the throne. There was nothing else to do. Custom dictates that I must travel to Warrior Falls and allow anyone of royal blood to challenge me for the crown. But no one did. I had hoped to god they would, but they wouldn’t.” She sighs and closes her eyes, tilting her head toward the bright lights above her and Tony watches the movement of her throat as she swallows.

 

“It wasn’t until afterward that anyone wanted to cause any sort of ruckus. I suppose losing so many people in so short a time will throw anyone off balance.”

 

“What do you need?”

 

It’s less an inquiry and more an offer of services and Shuri catches on to the meaning hidden in that simple question. He wonders if she knows that he’d do anything she asked of him. She’s got to know. It’s blatant and embarrassingly obvious.

 

“Stay here with me and help me figure this out. That’s all I need. If I can bring everyone back then maybe the uprisings will stop. That’s what I want.”

 

It’s on the tip of his tongue to say yes before he can even think about it, but then he’s reminded of Pepper and the baby and when he hesitates, she visibly deflates. “Nevermind, then. I’d forgotten you have more to do than humor me.” She means his marriage and his child and his home and for a second, he’s actually angry that she’s angry about that. But then he remembers she’s lost so much and so many and that she has the weight of an entire country on her shoulders, the expectations of the entire universe. She shares that with him, so he lets it go and moves to console her.

 

She gets up from the floor before he can stop her and he feels an acute sense of loss, her warmth replaced with cool air. And he wonders, even as he rolls over and groans to get off the floor, if maybe he can compromise. Pepper would understand, he knows. In the back of his head, he’s aware that he could probably just send Bruce, but he ignores that in favor of dusting his pants off and walking to where she’d wandered, to the large windows overlooking the city. For a long moment, he’s quiet with her, taking in the twinkling lights and the endless velvet sky.

 

And then she turns to him and for a second he wonders if she’ll kiss him. A little part of him is horrified that he wouldn’t stop her if she did.

 

“Would you be angry with me if I told you I wanted you to come see me last night?”

 

Tony sucks in a breath and holds it, not sure at all how to respond to that. He wouldn’t have been. The evidence is still on the tee shirt he’d worn on the flight over, had been sticky on his chest this morning.

 

“You’re the queen,” he says, for lack of anything else to say that doesn’t sound lovesick and pathetic. _And wrong_ , his mind whispers. This is wrong. She’s too close and too warm and too beautiful, staring up at him like he holds the key to the universe, and she makes him feel so big, so important. He needs to leave.

 

“What if I don’t want to be?” She asks, frowning as if the idea of ruling Wakanda is mostly just a mild annoyance instead of a heavy millstone about her neck. “What if for once I just want to be Shuri?”

 

A small hand comes up to grasp the collar of his shirt and the barest brush of her fingers across his skin makes him tremble. He doesn’t mean to; he knows if she knew the kind of power she has over him, this won’t turn out the way it’s supposed to. He needs to back away, to turn around and change the subject, but he can’t. He’s caught. And before he has the chance to back out of this like he should, she pulls him down and kisses him, her lips pressed against his own without any preamble and any sort of warning.

 

In retrospect, he’ll realize he could have stopped this before it ever started. This is the consequence of allowing an intellectual crush to blossom into a light flirtation that had somehow grown into whatever this is. But in the moment she kisses him (or had he kissed her? He wonders about that later, if maybe he’d leaned into her while she studied him and gave her any sort of hint.) he doesn’t think about blame or what happens after she pulls away. He only thinks of how good she tastes, and how she sighs into his mouth, and how soft her lips are. He only thinks of how fast his heart is beating in his chest, and that if she touched him right now, he’d probably go into cardiac arrest.

 

In actuality, the kiss only lasts a few seconds, but to Tony it seems to span an hour at the very least. And when she finally does pull away, her eyes are glassy and hazy and he knows she wants him as bad as he wants her. He doesn’t know how to react to that. This gorgeous thing, this girl queen, wants him and he isn’t sure how to process that information. Before he can even try and sort through the mess in his mind, though, there are footsteps behind them and he jerks away from her like he’s been shocked. He hopes to god he hasn’t been caught in something he’ll never be able to get out of.

 

“Your Majesty. Your car is ready.” There’s a Dora standing in the doorway, eyes downcast as she waits for Shuri to acknowledge her. Even if she’s seen anything, Tony has a feeling she won’t say anything. It’s his only real comfort. Guilt starts trickling through his body as Shuri moves from the window, from him, and over to her bodyguard. She turns only when she stands beside the Dora, a little secret sort of smile playing about her lips and she nods her head for him to follow. And he does, because what else could he do?

 

The ride back to the palace is quiet, too quiet, so he asks if they can turn on the radio or something. He needs a distraction. He sits in the backseat beside her and stares out the window because otherwise he knows he’d be staring at her and he can’t risk that, not with the Dora Milaje in the front seat. And besides, nothing more needed to happen; they’d kissed, and that was it, and that was all that would ever happen. A kiss wasn’t cheating. He didn’t think it was.

 

Shuri doesn’t move to play any music. Maybe the silence is his penance, then, because instead she reaches out along the smooth rich leather of the car’s backseat and finds his fingers in the dark with her own. His whole body responds, just from that touch, as her fingertips tiptoe up his hand and curl around his palm and then she’s holding his hand and he doesn’t stop her, because maybe she needs that. It’s a comfort thing, he tells himself. She only wants the comfort of another's touch, so he’ll have to allow it.

 

But Tony knows that there is no real limit to what he’d allow, not when it came to her.

 

Thankfully, he’s saved from knowing just how far she wants to go because she wishes him a good night at the crossroads of his corridor and hers and follows her guards down to her bedroom without a second glance.

 

So that was that, then. She’d wanted a kiss, and maybe a bit of skin and just a moment to feel something other than empty and hollow. And he was all she had there at the time, so he’d had to do, he supposes. It didn’t really mean anything. The thought of that should make him feel so much better about keeping this from Pepper (because he will, he won’t say a word, she doesn’t really need to know), and when he undresses, slowly and methodically, he pretends his entire body isn’t on edge and needing a release.

 

Just that once was all he’d allowed himself. And yet, as he falls back into the soft bed and grips the pillows around him, as he groans against the ache in his chest and the throbbing of his cock, he knows he’s lying to himself. So it’s only with the barest amount of hesitation that he takes himself in hand and imagines her underneath him, pliable and soft and so sweet. He’s got the taste of her lips still on his tongue and the feel of her breath on his mouth and that’s all it takes until he spends himself in the sheets, eyes closed tight and her name thundering through his head.

 

* * *

 

He does stay, only because they are so close to something and because when he’d called back home, Pepper had practically encouraged him to.

 

“I’m fine,” she says with a soft smile. “Honestly. If Queen Shuri needs you there to help then help.”

 

“I miss you,” he says, because it’s true. He does. He misses the simplicity of coming home to find Pepper there, tired and asleep on the couch as he carried her to their bedroom. He misses the warmth of her hand as she cradled his own. He misses her soft strength and her sweet kisses and her unwavering belief in whatever he does.

 

And he hates himself for kissing a girl thirty years his junior like it was of no consequence. His smile wavers a bit on his face, and Pepper notices, and for a panicking moment, he wonders if she knows. But then she sighs, and reaches forward along the screen as if she could touch him. “You’ll figure this out, I know it. It’ll all work out and everything will be okay.”

 

But would it really? He’s got secrets he can’t tell and an obsession he can’t shake and he is mostly grateful that Jane Foster stays in Wakanda for another week because it gives him distance from Shuri. Maybe she’d regretted what they’d done too, because she’s nothing if not polite to him, the same sort of distant she was to Pepper, the little edge of something more stuffed down and hidden deep within. It’s a bit of a relief; this is just what happens when there is the fate of the universe in the palm of your hands. And nobody knows, thank god.

 

Except Steve, of course. Because of course Steve Rogers knows everything. Tony hasn’t had to say a word, or even give a look, and he knows Steve knows and it’s only a matter of time before he’s confronted with this. He does his best to keep up the façade; he gives the man nothing to work with outside of what is the new normal. They do breakfast some days and occasionally lunch as Steve works with what remains of the Wakandan secret police to keep some sort of order in the insular country. It’s all he’s got to do with Nat still roaming the world and Bucky and Sam gone. And apparently, he’s got time enough to study Tony and figure out there is something off.

 

“What do you mean something is off? You’re gonna have to be specific. The world is a fucking mess, I’m not surprised that more people aren’t ‘off’.” He’s defensive when he shouldn’t be, and he knows whatever suspicions Steve has are being confirmed the more Tony rambles on. So he shuts his mouth and focuses on his eggs and tries not to give anything else away.

 

It’s a shame that Steve knows how to push his buttons. It really and truly is.

 

“Just an observation, Tony.” Steve settles back in his chair and crosses his hands across his chest, studying Tony’s face so acutely, that he feels like he’s under a microscope. It makes him claustrophobic and itchy. “I only wondered if you noticed anything odd going on with Queen Shuri the way I had.”

 

Tony deliberately avoids looking at Steve for as long as he’s able. He fiddles with his coffee, glances out at the marketplace, darts his eyes around and above his head but the second he fucks up and catches blue eyes, he knows he’s caught. Even still, he keeps his tone light and his response as neutral as he can lest he hangs himself even more than he’s sure he already has.

 

“She’s under stress, so am I, so is Jane, who by the way, is actually less in a relationship with both Thor and the Valkyrie and kind of sort of just sleeping with both at different intervals.”

 

“Did she actually tell you that?”

 

“In a roundabout way, yeah.”

 

Steve raises a brow in disbelief but shrugs it off and for a few blissful minutes, they chat about anything else besides the queen or time travel or the few cryptic messages Natasha had sent in the last few days. But then Steve moves to leave and just as Tony thinks maybe he’s avoided some kind of self righteous confrontation from Mr. Goody Two Shoes, he’s nearly backed into the corner closest to the door and Steve’s staring at him like he’s gotten every little transgression painted on his face. And maybe he does. He definitely feels like he does.

 

“Make it your business to remember who you are and what you are,” Steve says, his voice low and easy and that bothers Tony more than being yelled at or pushed around would.

 

“You don’t think I’m aware of that?” he shoots back, holding Steve’s steady, judging gaze for as long as he can before it burns and he has to blink and look to the side. “Nothing’s gonna happen.”

 

“I don’t have to tell you what would happen if it did.”

 

“It won’t.” Tony grins then, the way he does when he has nothing left in his arsenal but deflective humor. “You really think she’d want an old man like me?”

 

Steve says nothing to that. He only watches Tony for another long minute and shrugs his shoulders, then walks off into the bright morning while Tony leans against the wall and tries to not to panic.

 

* * *

 

They get a chance to test the time machine that day, using a pair of sunglasses as their guinea pig. When the glasses appear fifteen seconds later in the designated spot, Shuri and Jane jump up and down in excitement, the latter rushing to where Tony stands dumbfounded and hugging him tight.

 

“Did you see-it went forward, it actually worked! Tony, it-“ Jane can’t even get her words straight, she’s so excited.

 

He can’t really say anything because it had worked and though a part of him knew it would he still was stunned at the thought that they were just that much closer to fixing the past. They could rewrite history, solve everything. He has a brief flash of himself traveling back to 1991 and undoing his parent’s deaths, but the second passes when Shuri’s eyes meet his and they remind him there is no rewriting history.

 

Get in two years past, get out, bring back the information they need. That’s all they’re meant to do. And then they can undo the Happening and bring back those they lost. But not everyone, he knows.

 

He moves away from the machine and back to the table, sitting down heavily to type Bruce a message that their first test had been successful. For whatever reason, he feels so tired, like he’d run ten miles with a thousand pounds on his back. He feels like he should be happy about this, at least hopeful; they’re obviously moving in the right direction and they’re this much closer to getting everything resolved. He’ll bring back Peter for May and bring back Sam and Bucky for Steve and this whole mess, all of it, will have been just another traumatic adventure in his otherwise useless existence. But he can’t shake the feeling that something very wrong is going to happen before they can even travel back in time and stop Thanos. For the time being, he keeps that to himself.

 

Subsequent tests push the glasses further and further forward into time until they are up to three hours and six minutes. Shuri shuts the machine down for the night and starts following Jane out the lab, their arms brushing, their bodies close. The two of them had a dinner date the night before, apparently, one he was not invited to and one he shouldn’t feel left out of.

 

“All we should have to do now is reverse what we’ve done to go back. And the faster we figure that out, the easier it’ll be to get in and out of time without messing up anything.”

 

“You mean you don’t want to possibly alter timelines and human existence?” he quips, rubbing his temples as he feels the beginning of a headache start. How long has it been since his tense breakfast with Steve? He knows he hasn’t had anything in his system since. But he isn’t very hungry, and all he wants to do is retreat back to his room and pretend like he isn’t hurt that Shuri is still avoiding him.

 

“Trust me,” Jane says, with a hint of a smile. “If I thought tampering with time wouldn’t have dire circumstances, I’d do a little bit of altering myself.” He thinks once again about his mom and dad and all the mistakes he’s made and then to that kiss, the one that never should have happened and he hates that he doesn’t want to change that at all. And in the fading light of evening, he catches Shuri’s eye and wonders if she’d change anything about that kiss either. There’s something about how she looks at him that tells him no.

 

It was only a kiss. Just that once, only one simple kiss. Never mind that he can still taste the beer she had drank or that he has the little rush of breath that had left her lungs memorized deep in the dark recesses of his mind. None of that was important, not in the grand scheme of things. She was a queen, young and brilliant and beautiful and he was married. He was married and Pepper was pregnant and he needed to go back to his room and video chat his wife and ask her how their baby was doing. That’s what he needed to be doing instead of fantasizing about kneeling before Shuri and using his mouth to make her do a lot more than sigh.

 

So he goes back to the palace with them in the car and stays pressed close to the door, allowing Jane to sit in the middle so he doesn’t feel tempted to reach over and touch the queen. Even in the dark he can make out her form, can imagine how smooth her skin would be underneath his fingertips. He wants to watch goose bumps rise across her body from where his hands have marked her. He wants to sink beneath the crust of the earth and forget he’d ever seen her before. He swallows and keeps his head turned out to the city lights and promises himself he’ll make a mad dash for his room the second the car stops.

 

He should know better by now.

 

Sometimes, Tony thinks fate is a tangible thing and not some silly notion humanity thought up to explain why the world turned outside their control. More often than not, he’s fully aware that fate is what you make of it, that whatever a man does is all in his control no matter the circumstances. But there’s been so much that’s happened in his life that has him completely rethinking that, so many things that have thrown him off kilter. And the glossy dark skin of the queen of Wakanda is one of those things.

 

Jane is already gone to her room and for a moment he thinks he sees Steve hiding in the shadows but he’s left with nothing but marble and statues and the way she hesitates near his threshold.

 

He wants to tell her to come inside as much as he wants to wish her a curt goodnight. He could stop this right now, and he knows he must. But he has somehow convinced his weak, stupid, foolish heart that this is fate. There’s nothing he can do but ride the tide wherever it drags him.

 

 _Into the deep_ , he thinks, as she slips inside his room. _Pulled underneath and caught in the undertow._


	2. a heaven out of hell

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> a spotify playlist to accompany this fic is now available [here](https://open.spotify.com/user/melanimal/playlist/5qgqk2zaC8VDAeAi3SC3Zf?si=GbAezJefSWqoPuUt2rSoug)

This time, at least, Tony knows for sure that he’d kissed her first.

 

When she steps into his room he isn’t sure what to expect. She doesn’t say anything at first, only pushes past him and sits at the foot of his bed and waits. A silly little part of him thinks that maybe she only wants to talk, so he joins her, faces her on the opposite end and fiddles with a pillow as she watches him curiously.

 

“I never got to tell him I was in love with him.”

 

Tony doesn’t have to ask who she’s talking about because he already knows. And though he’d been curious about all that earlier, he finds he doesn’t really care to know who or what Bucky Barnes was to her. He’s only interested in her now, not her past loves or crushes. Even still, he can’t tell the queen what not to talk about in her own home. He is her guest, and so he must be polite and listen. Doesn’t mean he has to like it.

 

She seems to know this is irritating him because she gives him a slight, almost cruel smile that makes him vaguely angry.

 

“You wanted to know, didn’t you? What went on between Bucky and I?”

 

He hates how she emphasizes _Bucky,_  especially when she’s so close to him and she’s sitting in his bed. He’d only have to lean forward and reach out and he could pull her down to the sheets with him.

 

“I’m interested to know where you got that notion from,” he says, trying to steer clear of whatever she wants to tell him about Barnes. He doesn’t want to think of any of that while she’s here. He only wants to think of her.

 

But she doesn’t give him the answer he wants. She shrugs her slim shoulders and leans forward so he has no choice but to look in her eyes. What she says next makes him clench his fingers into the sheets.

 

“He was my first, you know. After the deprogramming and the therapy, after we spent months and months together, I let him have me first.”

 

Tony isn’t sure exactly what she wants him to do with that information except seethe. He has no real reason to care who was her first, especially since it wasn’t him. “You’re telling me this like I’m supposed to care.”

 

“You aren’t, but you do.”

 

“Uh, no. Not entirely. What I do care about is that you avoided me for nine days like I did something to you personally.”

 

She shrugs again, her face completely neutral but her eyes dancing dangerously. He knows now that she wants a reaction out of him and he’s stubborn enough to not give her the one she wants.

 

“You kept count?”

 

“I…look. That’s not the point. The point is, whatever regrets and hang-ups you have about what you didn’t get with Barnes has nothing to do with me.”

 

“It doesn’t?” She scoffs then and rolls her eyes and he wants to kiss her so badly right now he can taste it. “You get to flaunt your pretty wife and a baby in my face while I mourn a man I barely got to love. I lost so much, and you came out practically unscathed." He bristles at that because she's blatantly ignoring Peter, but he refuses to bring him up right now. He refuses to sully that boy's memory by talking of him to a woman who he wanted more than he needed to breathe. "That’s not fair," she says sourly. "You’re a selfish man, Tony Stark.”

 

“I don’t know what to tell you, your Majesty,” he says after a long moment of very tense silence, and he doesn’t. He doesn’t know what else she wants from him. “I’m sorry if I hurt you in some way, I’m sorry that I couldn’t stop Bucky from disappearing, but-“

 

“You could have. So could I. If I’d have gotten that stone out before Thanos got to Vision…if I had only killed him and taken it and hidden it away, then maybe…” She swallows and smiles so sadly that he can’t help reaching up to stroke her cheek. “My brother would still be alive. Bucky would still be alive, and none of this would be happening.”

 

It’s the same regret he has, the same sort of what if’s he’s gone over in his mind so many times that it’s now just a loop of pain that drives him mad to think about. He can feel his defenses lowering bit by bit as she looks at him with those haunting eyes, the hurt inside her swirling around violently as she fights the urge to cry. And once again, he wants to console her and tell her that he’ll make sure she’ll have her brother back, even at the cost of his own life.

 

“Then we’ll fix it,” he says, and he gets up from the bed because he can’t sit still and because she’s much too close to him right now. He paces the floor, catches a glimpse of her looking at him over her shoulder and tries conjuring up Pepper’s face so he doesn’t do something incredibly stupid. It’s no real use, because he knows when he meets her eyes and sees her open mouth and how utterly lost she looks, that he’s going to do something stupid.

 

“We’ll fix it. And I’ll get Bucky back and you can go on pretending that you never spent weeks flirting with me.” She sniffles and holds her chin high and something inside him snaps because he’s over at the bed before he knows it, a handful of her hair in his fist and her mouth smashed into his.

 

This isn’t at all how he’d wanted this to happen, but it's happening so he goes along with it.

 

Her fingernails dig into the base of his neck and pulls him down until he’s covering her in the bed, her mouth gasping and biting at his lips until they’re bruised and red. He wants to mark her until she bleeds, until she forgets anything at all about Bucky fucking Barnes, until she’s infected with him the way he is with her. It’s like his entire being is only focused on claiming her, mind blank and his searching hands tugging and pulling at her smooth, sweet skin. It’s as soft as he’d imagined it would be, softer even, and it prickles under his touch just the way he wants. Calloused hands meet the silk of her slim thighs and hitch them up around his waist, until she’s wrapped around him and grinding against him.

 

Shuri pulls back just long enough to tug at his tee shirt. He follows her eyes to the scar on his chest, the one on his belly, the sparse hairs that dot his skin. They’re sprinkled with grey and softer than the ones in his beard and she reaches out to touch him, her little hand shaking when she presses her palm against his breast to feel his heartbeat.

 

He knows if he was really going to do anything to stop this, he’d have done it right now but he just lets her touch him, slowly, as if she’s memorizing every pore of his skin. He lets her swipe her thumb over his bottom lip and push it into his mouth so that he suckles on it, and she closes her eyes for a moment, heaves in a shaking breath and tightens her thighs around him. He can feel her heat through her thin underwear and his pants and when she reaches down to unbutton them, he lets her, lets her drag her nails over his hips and slip around the small of his back.

 

“Would you have wanted me if you’d never met me like this?” Shuri asks, nuzzling his neck as she uses her feet to pull his pants the rest of the way down. “Would you have wanted me even if the world never ended?”

 

He moans into her ear, pushes his hips up and into the dampness of her panties and tries to focus on more than the fire in his belly. He can barely hear what she says, his heart thuds so hard in his ears. But she asks him again, darting her tongue out to taste the salt on his skin and he gasps out a yes. He would have. There really is no use in lying about it now. And he wonders what would have happened if things were different. Would he have still married Pepper anyway? Would she have been with Bucky or pursued him instead? What would have happened if nothing had happened?

 

It doesn’t help to think of it now because what happened already has and there’s nothing he can do to change that. So instead he slips his hands beneath her skirt and tugs her underwear down, breathes in the scent of her and kisses her again, slow and deep until she can taste nothing but his mouth. She hikes the skirt up over her hips and pulls it off, fumbles with the needlessly complex shirt she wears until Tony pulls her up roughly and nearly rips it from her frame. The look on her face would make him laugh if he wasn’t so desperate to have her right now. So he smothers his laughter by kissing her again, letting her push his mouth where she wants it. He blazes a trail down her chin and to her breasts, huffing in frustration to find them still covered.

 

“You gotta take this off,” he groans, when she digs her fingers into his scalp and draws blood, probably. It hurts, in a way that turns him on even more, if that’s possible. And he uses that pain to ground himself enough that he can unlatch her bra, press his mouth to her flesh and suck a nipple into his mouth to make her cry out. Her nails dig harder into his scalp the harder he sucks and his hips move of their own accord, anxious to be inside her, to be a part of her if only for this night.

 

 _Just this once_ echoes in the recesses of his brain as he dips his hands down past the flat plain of stomach to touch her.

 

She’s so hot and wet. It thrills him that this is for him, even if just for right now. Old enough to be her father with a little change left over and she’s this wet for him, just from his kisses and his trembling, groping hands. When he shimmies from between her legs and ghosts his breath over her core she pushes his head down eagerly and spreads her thighs wide for him. There’s vulnerability in having her open for him like this. He takes full advantage and latches on to her clit, sucking and licking her clean over and over again.

 

The way she reacts to his tongue is addicting. She arches from the bed and her moan is a sharp, shuddering thing that rocks her whole body. Tony has to hold her hips down as he eats or else she’d buck right off the mattress. There’s a depraved, jealous part of him that wonders if Barnes had ever done this for her, if his mouth had ever made Shuri pant out his name over and over and squeal in delight. It makes him harder to imagine Bucky’s mouth occupied and wet with her, harder than he probably should be, and almost too uncomfortable spread out on the bed. He flips them then, so that she’s hovering over his mouth and from this angle he can see her eyes better. She looks almost drunk and he loves how debauched and wrecked she is while she rides his face.

 

When she cums, she doesn’t say a word. Her hips still and she tenses, tight and near to snapping, the only sound from her throat a raspy moan. But her legs shake when she slides back and nearly flops over onto his chest, her wet pussy still exposed to him and though he needs to catch his breath, he can’t resist touching her there, fingers slick with her honey and reaching deep inside her. He doesn’t miss how she jerks back and tightens around him.

 

“Don’t tell me that’s too much,” he says, almost laughing when she bats his hand away and flops off of him onto the bed. She lets out a slow, deep breath and turns her head to him, reaching up to dig in his messy hair once more and grip. She seems to want him to hurt, to remind him of how much control she has over him, but something changes the longer she watches him. Tony catches a glimpse of that shift just when he thinks his erection has gone down enough that he can function.

 

“I lied,” she says finally, and it’s the soft confession of a sheltered, delicate girl, not a brilliant queen with the world at her feet.

 

“What about?”

 

“Bucky.”

 

She hides her mouth in his shoulder and blinks up at him with wide eyes. She looks her age right now and guilt floods his belly so abruptly that he has to move. She looks almost bereft at the loss.

 

“So you didn’t have anything going on?” he asks, mostly because if he talks he’ll distract himself from the naked girl in his bed. He’s still got his boxers on and if he doesn’t look at her, doesn’t think about how good she smells or what she looks like when she’s falling apart, he can walk away from this. _Quit while you’re ahead, Stark. Eating isn't cheating, not really, not all the way._ He doesn’t remember where he’d heard that little turn of phrase, but as he licks his lips and glances to the side of him to see glimpses of her smooth, dark skin, he knows he’s bullshitting himself.

 

He’s already too far gone to come back now.

 

“I did love him,” she says, her voice quieter than he’d like. “I do, I mean. I told him. He kissed me and told me to wait on him, but that was all, that was as far as we got.”

 

It dawns on him then what she’d lied about and he closes his eyes with a soft groan.

 

“He wasn’t your first.”

 

Not that he cared at all who her first was-first kiss, first date, first anything. Barnes was her first love, probably, but why should any of that matter to him? He can’t stand the idea that he’s jealous. And for some reason, Tony isn’t sure who he’s more jealous of.

 

“No. Not like that.”

 

He turns around entirely then and watches her face, tempted to lean down and claim her lips if only to wipe the sad look off her face. “So why’d you tell me that then? You really think making me jealous was gonna get you in my bed?”

 

She almost smiles, sardonically, but settles for biting her bottom lip and it’s sexier than it should be. “Maybe. I wanted you to feel bad. Did you?”

 

He shakes his head though he’s lying and she knows he is because she sits up, wraps her arms around him from behind and presses a kiss to his neck. Every nerve in his body reacts; unconsciously, he leans back into her touch and reaches behind him, coming in contact with her naked skin.

 

“You’re a liar, Tony Stark,” she whispers into his ear before nibbling on the shell of it. There’s a grin against his jaw when he groans. “What if I told you that no one has been my first?”

 

Tony blinks in the dark of his room and clenches his hands into her slim hips. It makes her wince, just a little bit, a squeak of a noise that has his cock jumping in his underwear and he so desperately wants to draw that kind of noise out of her again. He’s dimly aware of her hands on his belly, slipping down to grasp him and stroke lightly. Mostly he’s wrapped up in the insinuation that she’s never done this before, that he could be her first, and the dirty old man that hides inside him wants to be.

 

 _Hiding_. Yeah, okay. That son of a bitch was lurking in the shadows, just waiting for someone to ravish.

 

“Nothing,” he grits out, because he doesn’t have anything to say about that. Only, maybe he does, maybe he’s wondering how in the world someone as beautiful and sexy as she is could have never done this before. “None of my business.”

 

“It could be,” she purrs, kissing his temple and dragging her nails through his scalp once more. “Except you’re being a stubborn asshole.” The hands in his hair tighten and tug back until he whimpers, and she attacks his neck, leaving wet bites along his reddened skin. “Are you scared, Anthony?”

 

“Of you?” he asks, grunting when her tiny hand slides up the shaft of his cock and squeezes. He could get off just like this if she didn’t stop. But of course she does, because she wants more. It’s more than he should be giving her, but then again, even that kiss had been more than he should have given and they were so far past that now.

 

“Are you?”

 

He shakes his head because he isn’t scared of her, no, not truly. He’s scared of what she does to him, the lengths he would go to please her, the rules he’s broken for her. He wants to place all the blame at her feet but he could never. He’s a grown man who knows better, but he’ll gladly follow her into hell anyway.

 

So when she drags him back down to the bed and kisses him, all heat and hunger and pulls him into her arms, wraps her body around his, he doesn’t resist. He can’t, not anymore; he’s so tired of trying to dismiss this as just a crush, just an infatuation. He wants her, body and soul, and he drinks in her mouth, drowns in her touch. He thinks, as the guilt of what he’s doing is fading with every sigh she makes, that this is all it’ll take to purge her from his system and get him back to good.

 

He’s _so_ stupid.

 

When he pulls off his underwear and settles between her thighs, kissing her all the while, stroking her skin with expert hands, he realizes this isn’t a one and done sort of thing. And when she reaches down to grasp his cock and slides it slick against her clit, push it just a little inside her and back up over and over until she’s dripping for him, he knows there’s no turning back, there’s no undoing what is to be done. He catches her eye in the dark of his room and gives her one last out (gives himself one more chance, but he never takes it) before he holds his breath and pushes inside her, smooth and deep.

 

Tony groans when he bottoms out, eyes closed shut and his mouth slack, and he whispers out her name, his body trembling as he tries to keep from moving. She feels so good, so _so_ good, tight as hell and so wet, and she’s holding on to him for dear life as her body tries to adjust to him. He wishes he could feel bad about it, knowing the penetration had been a bit abrupt, but he can’t. And either way, she isn’t complaining. The look on her face is one of pure awe, a little shock, and he wonders how this feels for her.

 

“You okay?”

 

Shuri gives him a slight nod and sucks in breath after breath, her grip on him still tight and her body still tensed. But she doesn’t hiss in pain when he pulls back finally and then pushes back in. Instead, she draws her knees up further and moans softly, the new sensations overriding any fear she may have felt before. That’s all he wants, to make her feel good. He wants to blow her mind, he wants to drive every last thought of Bucky Barnes from her head and replace them with memories of _his_ cock, of _his_ fingers, _his_ mouth and body. He might not be her dream fuck, but he’ll be one of her best, he knows that.

 

The first few thrusts are shallow, slow and easy, until he can gauge that she wants more. He kisses her slowly, all tongue and teeth, and sucks her nipples into his mouth until they stand hard and high. She lets his hands roam her skin and he lets her touch him, a shaking palm pressed to his chest and fingers curling at the nape of his neck. She isn’t inhibited in her pleasure. She whimpers and moans and gasps out for more and calls out his name until he’s drunk on the ego trip of it all.

 

“ _Anthony_ ,” she pants, and he gets on his knees, moves his hips just a little harder and faster. He almost laughs to know Barnes hadn’t gotten this from her, that no one else had. He was her first and she would never forget the feel of him inside her if he had his way. “Tony, yes, yes, please-“

 

“How do you want it, baby?” he asks sweetly, grunting a little as he pushes in deep and presses his hand to her belly, feeling the muscles there quiver as he takes her. He shifts her thighs so they drape across his own and he waits for her response, watching her face as she twists her fingers in the sheets and accepts every inch, receiving him greedily, her cunt’s grasp on his cock so tight it’s like she hates to feel him pull out.

 

“Tony,” she moans out, her back arching a bit to take him better. As good as she feels he doesn’t want to rush. He wants to drag this out for as long as he can, though he knows if she finds her bearings and starts to move with him, he’ll come apart quickly. “Harder, Tony, I can...mmmph...I can take it, I…”

 

She lets out a little cry and grabs his hand, the one still holding her down as he fucks her, and stares him deep in his eyes. Sweat beads across her brow and drips down her chest and Tony pushes her thighs back to lean forward and lick the line of salt that curves around her breast. The angle tightens her around him enough that he has to slow down and gather his wits and push away the urge to pin her by her throat to the bed and fuck her hard and ruthless. She deserves better than that.

 

So he wraps her in his arms, her knees still hitched around his shoulders and moves slower, deeper, hard enough to know he means this but gentle enough that she feels nothing but pleasure. No pain. He won't give her any pain unless she begs him and even then, he knows he couldn't do it.

  

She flourishes under his touch, his mouth on hers and he murmurs against her lips, little praises at how good she feels, accolades at how beautiful she is. "So good, baby," he groans, eyes fluttering open and closed as his own pleasure threatens to swallow him. He has to pace himself, hold back. He has to make her cum first before he even thinks of falling over that precipice. But she's making it so hard. The little sounds she makes, the way she clenches around him without even thinking of it are driving him crazy. He doesn't even care that his words come out like a shaking, garbled mess because that's what she's making him. "Fuck, you feel...fuck..." He kisses her again, groaning when she opens her eyes to meet his.

 

"I need more," she whispers, and Tony can't deny her. He pulls her legs from around his shoulders and slides an arm beneath her ass, moves her with his thrusts so that her head falls back in a gasp of absolute ecstasy. He watches as he disappears deep inside her, then slide out, over and over and it winds her up bit by incredible bit, until she pushes her hands into the mattress and her hips up into his, moving along with him. It takes her a moment to find the rhythm, but when she does it's unlike anything he's ever felt. He bows his head to her shoulder and grips her hips, marveling at how big his hands look against her small frame, at how he seems to dwarf her and cover her completely.

 

"Tony!" she cries out, her shallow breaths hot against his throat. "Tony, I wanna-"

 

He angles his hips a little and presses right against that spot deep within her that makes her keen and buck hard from the bed. "Touch yourself for me, sweetheart," he pants out, guiding her hand down to her swollen clit, and when she starts to circle it, her fingers shaking and her eyes fluttering closed, her cries pitch higher and higher until he can feel her tighten around him. She screws up that pretty face of hers and leans into his body and she cums, beautiful and breathtaking, a scream deep in her chest and his name on her lips.

 

 _“Anthony_ …”

 

Tony wants nothing more than to push her through her orgasm and then to another, to bend and break her until she's a sobbing mess in his bed, but he can't stop his hips from moving and he's cumming too, so hard and so fast that he doesn't have time to pull out. And distantly, in the far reaches of his mind, he doesn't want to, no matter the consequences. He wants to fill her with his seed, to mark her as his, a primitive, primal part of him pushing her down into the mattress and riding out his pleasure until she's milked him for all he's worth.

 

He finds it hard to catch his breath after, when he's collapsed by her side, her legs still wrapped lazily around him and his softening cock still half inside her. He doesn't want to pull away, doesn't want to leave this bed. She lies back half dazed with her eyes closed and her own breathing still coming in shallow, rushed waves. Slim fingers slide up the expanse of his sweaty back and then down, over and over in little tides that threaten to lull him to sleep.

 

But he's not an inconsiderate lover, no matter what else he is, so he finds some sort of strength to pull up a bit on his elbow and he watches her face for a long while, watches for any discomfort or regret. She seems to like his body on top of hers like this; she pulls him over until he's chest to chest with and when he tries to finally withdraw, she locks her knees around his thighs, holding him fast. It makes him laugh, a deep sort of rumble that has her moaning softly.

 

"Good?"

 

"Mmhmm."

 

She nods her head and opens her eyes and they're as clear as they've ever been. She lets out a laugh that sounds like sunlight and pulls him down to kiss her once more, this one surprisingly sweet and chaste, and she traces the lines in the corners of his eyes with her thumbs.

 

"Better than I expected," she says, and he almost blushes. He scoffs and nibbles at her fingers, slipping one in his mouth and sucking the sweaty salt from it, the taste of her still lingering from where she'd touched herself. He wonders if she can take more. He wants to devour her whole again, to slip his tongue inside her and have her climbing the walls from how good it feels.

 

"I'm scared to ask what you expected," he quips instead, because she doesn't seem ready to move. He settles for simply touching her, enjoying the feel of her body pressed into his own. This is more than what he'd ever thought he'd get, and it's all he's willing to ask for.

 

"Then don't," she says, a dangerous sort of glint in her eye. Shuri stretches out her arms above her and then wraps them back around him and for a long time, neither of them say a word. He lays his head on her chest and listens to her breathe, and though he hadn't planned to, he falls asleep.

 

He takes her again a few hours later, when he wakes up, this time with her on top and her braids falling down her back like a waterfall. She finds a rhythm and sticks to it, something hard and fast and punishing so that he cums faster than he'd wanted. But she feels so good that he can't feel to bad about it, though she teases him on his lack of stamina. "Old man," she huffs, his cock slipping from her hot heat and he whines at the loss. "Thought you'd last longer than this. Aren't you an Avenger?"

 

He narrows his eyes and pulls her hips to his mouth, spreading her lips with his fingers and licking her roughly. When she mumbles out his name and something that sounds a lot like an expletive, he gives her a cocky grin. "I didn't bring my Viagra with me, your Majesty. Wasn't planning on this."

 

"Liar," she moans, as she grips the headboard and starts to ride his face, and he knows she's right. He's a liar, a dirty cheating liar.

 

But she tastes so good he can't feel guilty, at least not right now.

 

The guilt comes later that next morning. But not before three more rounds that leave him exhausted but sated, her body curled up around his and her lips on his throat. She's not there when he wakes; he doesn't know if he expected her to be. When his eyes focus in the dim morning light and he feels how empty the bed is, his chest aches.

 

And then everything they'd done, everything they'd said, comes flooding back to him and overwhelms him. He sucks in air but still can't breathe, sitting up in the tangled sheets with wide panicked eyes.

 

He scrubs at his skin in the bath until he's reddened and raw, trying to convince himself he can wash the sin from his body, but it's no use. He dips his head underneath the sudsy hot water and closes his eyes, and when the burn in his lungs is a little too much, he screams.

* * *

 

Tony doesn’t tell her he’s leaving.

 

He calls Bruce, asks him to act as replacement for a few days while he “recovers" from some sudden illness. He leaves in the quinjet without a word to anyone, except Okoye who eyes him suspiciously when he almost runs to the hangar. “Uh, an emergency, General,” he says by way of explanation, offering her a terse, halfhearted smirk and sighing as he slips into the pilot's chair. He can feel her eyes on him even as he starts to take off and he wonders if just maybe that she knows more than she’s saying.

 

It’s a long flight back home.

 

Pepper’s at work when he gets back to the compound, though both Rhodey and Bruce are home, the latter on the phone with the Secretary of State and Bruce with his bags waiting at the door. Rhodey shoots him a distracted smile and a wave, and turns back to his phone conference. Bruce walks with him down to the lab, a nervous sort of energy about him.

 

“So the uh, this cold or whatever…you're okay, right? You’re not gonna start drifting away in a pile of ashes or anything?”

 

Tony winces at the comment but shakes his head and heads straight for the bar. He needs whiskey, something old and strong that will dull the guilt that thumps like a bass drum in his head.

 

“Fairly certain I’m not,” he responds, pouring a finger quickly and knocking it back like nothing. He grimaces a bit from the burn, but it’s something solid to hold on to. “Just having a bit of a crisis is all. You good to go though? I mean, I hate to drop this on you like this, but shit, Bruce, I need…I need a break, it’s a little too much and I-“

 

“Did you kiss her?”

 

The question throws Tony so far off he spills the whiskey he’s pouring. He stares at Bruce dumbfounded, then scurries to wipe his bar when the liquor soaks the sleeve of his shirt.

 

“Fucking hell, I-“

 

“Tony. Look at me.” Bruce’s voice is a command, a soft sort of plea in it that wants him to lie, lie, lie it all away. “Look at me and tell me. Did you?” How the hell he knows is anyone's guess, least of all Tony's. But Bruce is far more observant and perceptive than most gave him credit for. And Tony knows he was slipping; it was so hard to hide what he felt, especially when it came to Shuri. Even still, Tony wants to shake his head so badly it hurts. He wants to be able to say he’d done nothing, not even touch her, but he still has the taste of her sweet pussy on his tongue and her voice ringing in his ears, his name cried out like a prayer.

 

_Anthony._

 

He stares too long, and Bruce knows. Or, at least he knows _something_. “Fuck, Tony. What the fuck.”

 

“Look, I can explain-“

 

“Really? Cause I want to know what in the hell possessed you to kiss the queen of Wakanda when you’re _married_ and she’s so young and-“

 

“Bruce, I’m…I don’t know what to say, I-“

 

There’s a sharp intake of breath before Bruce raises his hand and closes his eyes. And he’s silent for a long moment, so long that Tony’s hand cramps from where he’s got a grip on the whiskey bottle.

 

“Tell me it was just a kiss, Tony. Please. Tell me it didn’t go any further than that. Tell me you wouldn’t do that to Pepper. _Please_.” Bruce is begging him, both with his words and with his eyes and Tony glances to the hall that leads from the house, hoping to hell that Pepper is still gone and Rhodey is still preoccupied. He can’t stand the idea of either of them knowing, not even about a kiss.

 

And though he knows he’s lying through his clenched teeth, he nods, eliciting an almost relieved sigh from Bruce. _If only he knew_ , Tony thinks, easing his grip on the whiskey bottle and sitting it down. A kiss was just a kiss, but last night had been so much more than that.

 

“Look. A kiss is…okay. I mean, it’s _not_ okay. It’s not right, but…”

 

“We were both really stressed and I-“

 

“Okay, but Tony, she’s a _kid_. She’s a kid and you’re…not.”

 

“Thanks Bruce. Appreciate it.” He rolls his eyes but then looks immediately contrite. “It wasn’t anything. Just emotion and…I felt rotten about it after you know?” He hadn’t. He’s such a dirty liar. “I apologized and she told me not to worry about it and-“

 

“Good. Good, just leave it that, okay? Leave it alone. I’m glad you came home, Tony, I’m glad…” Bruce trails off and inhales, then attempts a weak smile. Tony’s heart beats so hard in his chest he’s scared it’ll quit on him and kill him dead. Better that than the truth. Better he drop dead right now than admit he’d spent the night making love to the queen of Wakanda.

 

Making love? _Fuck_.

 

“You knew when to leave it alone for a while. Let things cool off.”

 

 _No_ , he thinks, though he gives Bruce a weak, almost ashamed smile. Nothing had cooled at all. There had been a match ignited the first day he’d met Shuri, and the fire had become an inferno. It would burn him alive, he knew, though he _wanted_ the flames to consume him, to destroy him, to turn him to ashes.

 

(Just like Peter. Just like Peter and Stephen and Quill and Sam and Bucky and…)

 

Bruce leaves him in the lab with a head so full it could burst and a heart that beats wild with guilt. Pepper comes home and kisses him happily (on the same mouth he’d kissed Shuri) and wraps her arms around his shoulders (the same shoulders that Shuri’s nails had scratched across) and pulls him onto the couch where she sits in his lap. He tries not to think of slim dark thighs, of Shuri’s sweet skin against his, of her sweat on his tongue and the scent of her wetness.

 

His wife notices something is wrong, because she pulls back and stares at him curiously, intensely even and he’s terrified she can read his mind.

 

“Tell me what’s wrong.”

 

“Nothing,” he says, offering her a smile that feels so phony, he feels like it’ll crumble into pieces. “Nothing at all.”

 

“Tony.”

 

There’s a warning in her tone, and a plea to tell him what’s on his mind because she knows how he gets when he starts to bottle everything up. She only wants him to be okay. That hurts more than anything, but he can’t indulge in that pain. He’d done it to himself. He draws in a breath, the phoney smile slipping, and presses his fingers into her hip, just to ground him a bit.

 

“It’s just that…”

 

For a split second, he stares into those blue eyes that he loves and he considers confessing everything-the kiss, the crush, and the entire experience the night before. But he can’t, not when she’s looking at him like he’s her world and everything good in it. Not when she trusts him so much, not when she loves him so hard.

 

_For richer, for poorer…_

 

So he swallows back what he almost says and simply shakes his head and it’s like being burned from the inside out. _God, Stark, you’re a piece of shit._

 

“Everything is getting to you, isn’t it?”

 

He doesn’t have a better lie, so he nods and keeps his eyes down, away from hers and her bright gaze and her beautiful heart. His Pepper…the hell had he done to his Pepper?

 

“Look…Tony, you’re going to fix this. I know you are. You are amazing, you are…you are going to bring them all back and everything will be fine.” Her voice breaks a bit and she blinks back tears, cups his jaw, and kisses his cheek so sweetly that Tony can’t stop his own tears from falling.

 

And even still, when Pepper cuddles up with him on the couch, when she starts on about their tentative plans for the future, about baby names and colors for the nursery, he can think of nothing else but Shuri. He holds his wife and thinks about his girl queen, and his soul _burns_.

 

_Ashes, ashes, we all fall down._

 

* * *

 

Shuri doesn't call him for what feels like a long time.

 

In the weeks she ghosts him, he spends them wrapped up in Pepper, obsessed with the child that grows inside her, and focused on his work. He interacts with only Bruce, passes a message to Jane, pretends like Wakanda doesn't exist though he knows there's a young woman on the other side of the world marked by his touch.

 

He spends nights awake in bed with his wife tucked into his side and confesses his sins to her silently, his mouth moving but his voice unheard, and he blinks back tears at every possible reaction she might have. Would she hate him? Would she be angry but ultimately forgive him? Would she accept that he'd made a mistake, or would she turn and leave, throw her wedding ring to the ground and refuse to ever see him again?

 

He isn't sure and doesn't know and won't find out. He refuses to speak a word.

 

Rhodey can tell something is up, but he keeps mum, too, even when they grab lunch and try to catch up. It's the same old thing; Rhodey's work takes up all his time, the time he doesn't spend talking to his mother and nephew. He'd lost his brother in the Happening, a few friends from the Army, cousins and distant relatives. And Sam still haunted him, he said, because he'd had to die alone. There was no trace of Sam Wilson in any part of Wakanda, so Rhodey knew. Tony did too, but he hated to say it aloud.

 

"You can't take on all this alone, Tony," he says, his eyes understanding and kind in spite of the sadness that still echoes in them. That was how he was, understanding and kind and Tony doesn't deserve it. He thinks of his January wedding and the way Rhodey had beamed when he'd married Pepper. And he thinks of how much he would disappoint the man he'd known for so long, that now he could barely remember life before him.

 

Guilt bubbles forth into his mouth but he swallows it down like bile. If he won't tell Pepper, he won't tell Rhodey.

 

"I'm not. Promise you that. Bruce is handling the tough stuff right now, you know, while I focus on me and Pep and the baby." He fiddles with the label of his beer and glances toward his phone almost automatically. He doesn't know why he keeps anticipating her call. He knows it's probably for the best that she doesn't.

 

"Yeah, but I know you. You'll get up in the middle of the night and try working on this until you drop." Rhodey leans forward and grasps his shoulder, offers him whatever bit of support he can and it aches to know that this man would give him so much when he doesn't deserve it. "Take it slow. Whatever happens, happens. We can fix this but...don't try and rush through it just because you-"

 

"I'm not. I'm not." He nods, looks as sincere as he possibly can. He wonders if he rushes this, if he can fix this now, if would that mean that he could bring back Bucky for Shuri and the whole affair would be nothing more than a wild dream. He's got a feeling that isn't what's going to happen, but he clings to that little bit of promised absolution. It's all he's got and it'll have to do.

 

When Rhodey goes back to his work and leaves Tony on his own in the laboratory, he unlocks his phone and stares at the screen for a long time.

 

He scrolls through his contacts and his thumb hovers over her number and he thinks to the nearly two months he’s gone without hearing her voice. He could call her right now and indulge himself, he knows, but that would be admitting he needed her. He could admit he wanted her, but not that he needed her. No, that would undo all he’d done to forget her in the weeks she had ignored him. And yet, as his eyes burn from the glare of the screen and his finger shakes as he tries so desperately to maintain some sort of self control, he knows he’s lying to himself once again.

 

That’s all he was good for now. Lying.

 

He tosses the phone across to the couch and pulls up something to watch on tv to get his mind off of her. She wasn’t thinking about him. She’d have called if she was. No doubt she’d forgotten all about him, had brushed off whatever they’d done as the one night stand it was. Easier to forget, he thinks. Easier to forgive. _Just this once_ rings in his head and he almost laughs at the silly notion he’d had that night that maybe this wouldn’t be more than a one time thing.

 

And just when he thinks he’s fine, the phone rings.

 

He holds his breath and ignores it, not recognizing the ringtone at all and once he gets up from his spot on couch, he realizes he doesn’t recognize the number, either. But he’d know that prefix anywhere; it’s the same as Shuri’s. He has her number memorized though he doesn’t know why. He has entirely too much about her committed to memory. That was his problem now.

 

The call goes to voicemail, and he feels like he can breathe again. He watches the screen for a moment and lets the tension in his shoulders ease up some, aware that he’s grinding his teeth when he feels his jaw cramp. And then the it rings again.

 

Same number, but this time he can’t hold his breath. And he can’t ignore it either; he snatches the phone from the couch and lets the green icon bleed into his retinas until his body acts of its own accord and he answers the call.

 

“Yeah.”

 

No need for formalities. He doesn’t owe her that, not when she’d let him leave like it meant nothing at all to her. And it didn’t, probably. It should be a good thing that it doesn't, but it most definitely is not.

 

“Is that how you greet your queen?” she asks, and he shivers at the sound, the lilt of her soft accent making his body stand at attention. Her voice remarkably is close for someone so far away. An ocean apart and he could swear she was behind him, almost to the point he thinks he’d feel her hands on his shoulders or her lips on his neck. He swallows before he answers and lets out a raspy chuckle.

 

“Yeah, so I didn’t think Wakanda’s jurisdiction stretched out this far over the Atlantic.”

 

“I wasn’t talking about New York,” she replies, and he can hear a smile in her voice. “Only you.”

 

That makes him grin in spite of everything and he drops the octave of his voice, hums pleasantly over the line as if he hasn’t been on edge for weeks and aching to hear her speak.  “Does this come with benefits? You know, the whole monarchy thing? Free health and dental, a nice 401k?” He wants to make her laugh so badly it’s ridiculous and he finds himself scrambling for silly things to say just to hear her giggle.

 

“Normally, yes,” she says, playing along. Her voice echos wherever she is and he almost asks if she had to sneak away, if she’s calling him on some clandestine line so that no one knows. “But you left me, so you forfeit all rights to any benefits.” And she sniffs, indignantly, as if his leaving had really hurt her so badly. A little part of him is annoyed that she’s toying with him like this; almost 21 years old and she beat him at his own game on so many levels. But it’s such a massive turn on that he lets it slide. He knows he’d probably forgive her worse and without question.

 

“Okay, but I distinctly recall you leaving me first, he counters, keeping his eyes on the door just in case. 

 

“If I didn’t know any better, I’d think you were upset with me, Anthony.”

 

“Maybe. Are you gonna make it up to me, your Majesty?”

 

She snorts out a laugh and he feels his mouth curling up like an idiot. “Only if you come back to me.” Shuri lets out a sigh and then there’s a pause and her entire tone changes, the flirty banter and bravado she’d put on dropping like a curtain and the girl she still was slipping through. “I need you.”

 

His breath hitches at that. Somewhere in her statement there had to be a lie, but he drinks it down greedily and closes his eyes, clings to the idea that she misses him, that she needs him.

 

“Yeah? What do you need me for, pretty baby?”

 

He likes the little noise she makes over the phone, a half whimper, half moan and he thinks he may have found a chink in that armor of hers. He pushes forward just a little and tries something else. “Answer me, sweetheart. What do you need me for?”

 

“A favor,” she says, the words almost timid, as if she’s afraid he’ll tell her no. she’s got to know him better than that at this point. “Nothing to do with the time machine right now, though I do want to talk to you about that, but-”

 

“What time.”

 

He stands up with a groan and tries to think of a lie to tell Rhodey. _There’s been a breakthrough in the lab and Shuri wants me there for testing. Bruce needs me to switch_...nah, nah, that wouldn’t do. The former sounded better than the latter, but he needed to cover his bases in case Bruce didn’t play along. Why would he? There was already the tension of knowing he’d kissed Shuri between them. There didn’t need to be more.

 

“As soon as you can get here. We can run a few tests for good measure, if you want.”

 

He’s halfway down to the garage before he realizes he doesn’t need an aircraft nor an excuse. He’s got the perfect one waiting for him back in the lab, one he hasn’t touched in nearly a year. It’s an effort to even look at the damned thing sometimes, but for Shuri, he can stand to put the suit on.

 

“Give me a few hours.”

 

She lets him go with a soft goodbye and he shoots Rhodey and Pepper each a text. It’s not quite a lie, he tells himself, as the bleeding edge sweeps over his body. It’s half a truth and that’s better than nothing.

 

_Testing the suit out for a while...be home tomorrow. <3 _

 

* * *

 

It’s dark in Wakanda when he arrives, the blue black sky dotted with stars behind him, the golden glow of her bedroom in front of him. She waits for him on her balcony, wrapped in a boldly patterned  blanket, her hair down and around her shoulders and her face carefully blank. She won’t give herself away, at least not until she wants to. And in that way, she still has all the control.

 

But he wants to change that. He can see the wear and tear of ruling a country all over her face, in the line of her mouth, the slope of her shoulders. He wants to take the weight of it all off her and put it on his own body, kiss her until she’s light as a feather and fix whatever she has that is broken. The control is running her ragged and he wants to be the one to soothe the frays. He drifts to her slowly and catches the too quick smile she gives him when his feet touches ground.

 

“You came,” she says, and it’s better than hearing her speak over the phone. She’s here, an arms length away, and all it would take is another step or two to pull her to him.

 

“You rang.” He smirks, though she can’t see him, and he stands toe to toe with her, face tilted up to gaze at him as she reaches out one hand to smooth across his travel worn armor. Her fingers dance across the light of the R.T. and tap on it’s casing and he lets her hands span the armor, intimately, as if she were trying to reconfigure the entire thing in her mind.

 

“So I did. I almost expected you wouldn’t come.” She flicks her eyes to the mask he wears and she frowns before thumping it playfully. “Take that off. I want to see your face.”

 

“Are you always this bossy, your Majesty?”

 

“Mmmhm. Are you always this stubborn?”

 

Tony lets out a dramatic sigh but complies, his smirk growing when her eyes flick from his to his mouth as the suit fades away. Her hand still hovers over his face, but she doesn’t move to touch him just yet. Instead, she seems to be studying him, and it makes him feel antsy.

 

“Like what you see?”

 

Shuri glances back to his eyes and holds his gaze steady before meeting him the rest of the way. She presses her body into his and he folds her into his arms, almost groaning at how good it is to hold her again.

 

“You’re not bad for an old man,” she says in an almost whisper, their little secret. It’s so clandestine to stand with her outside in the cool October air where anyone can see. He wonders what it would take to convince her to let him have her right here in the open. There’s a thrill to almost getting caught, a certain illicit sort of rush that makes him dizzy at the mere thought. He’s got visions of her thighs wrapped around his shoulders and Steve Rogers lurking in the dark corners. It turns him on way more than should be right, but at this point, he’s already sure he’s got an express ticket to whatever hell awaits him when he dies.

 

“Not bad. Uh huh. You called me all the way over from New York ‘cause I’m _not bad._  Yeah, not buying it.”

 

Shuri presses her lips into a line but she doesn’t pull away from him. She snuggles in closer, stealing his heat and his breath and he lets his hands slip inside the thick blanket, wrap around her tiny waist. He loves that he can span the entire width of it so easily. He loves that she has to catch her breath when he scrapes his fingernails across her sensitive ribs.

 

“If I told you the truth, it’d go right to your head.”

 

“Tell me anyway.”

 

She tilts her head up to look at him and there’s a naughty glimmer in her eye that makes him grin. “Only if you call me that again. _Pretty baby._ I like that.”

 

“You do, don’t you?” he asks her, smothering a groan when she pushes her hips into his. She’s got to know just how badly he wants her right now because there’s absolutely no way he could hide it. “What else do you like?” He wants to know every little thing that makes her tick so he can use it to drive her insane.

 

She blinks her pretty brown eyes at him and her smile turns absolutely devious, stirring his blood to boiling and he leans in to kiss her, hot and quick so that she gasps in his mouth. He does it again, pulls away, laughs at how she scowls when he stops, and then repeats it before she gets annoyed and pulls away from him and out his arms. He thinks he’s done something wrong for a second, but her fingers reach up and grasp where the blanket is tucked into itself and tugs, letting it fall away. She wears absolutely nothing underneath except skin, miles and miles of luscious skin, and a tiny little strand of beads around her waist that dip around and skim across her hips. Tony wants to drag his tongue across those beads and then further below until it dips down to the soft curls that cover her cunt.

 

“I’ll make you a deal,” she says, arms coming back around his middle and her hands dragging up his back. He doesn’t really hear what shes saying; his entire mind is muddled by the sight of her naked flesh and the feel of her slight body. “I’ll tell you what I like if you come to bed with me.”

 

“Did you even have to bargain for that?” he asks, already bending down to lift her from the ground and carry her to the bedroom. “You could have literally just thrown the blanket off and went, ‘hey asshole, come fuck me’ and I would have come running.”

 

She giggles at the profanity and kisses a line up his neck that makes him moan, wraps her legs around his waist as he stumbles inside. His knees hit her bed and he lays her down, pulling away so he can slip his shirt over his head and toss it across the room.

 

“But this so much more fun,” she says, pulling him back down and pressing a kiss to the shell of his ear. She pauses long enough that the anticipation of what she’ll say or do next ratchets up a few more notches. And then she takes it up one more agonizing level, rendering him speechless as all the blood in his body drains directly to his cock.

 

“Don’t you like it when I tease you, _D_ _addy_?”

 

Tony swallows hard and grasps her chin so she stares at him. She’s pushing buttons she has absolutely no business pushing. She doesn’t know what she’s getting into, not calling him that when she sounds that way.

 

“No. Don’t even think about it-”

 

She pouts then, so pretty and prissy. He thinks of how pampered she’s had to have been in her life; one instance where she doesn’t get her way and she sticks out her lip about it. It’s amusing and frankly, a little sexy, too. It only feeds further into his filthy fantasies, ones he didn’t think she needed to know about. She could destroy him if she knew what calling him daddy did to him.

 

But he’s never had the best luck. His score is somewhere in the negatives and she keeps getting win after win over him. So of course she’d beat him at this. He’d walked right into it, too, he thinks sluggishly. Should have kept his mouth shut and the pet names to a minimum.

 

He should have never touched her, but it was much too late for that.

 

“But that’s what the American girls say, right?” she asks, trying hard to look innocent and failing completely. “ _Daddy_. You don’t like it when I call you daddy?”

 

“Don’t do this to me, Shuri,” he pleads, a last ditch effort to keep a little bit of the dignity he has left, because if she keeps this up he’ll be a dog on a chain for her. He probably already is, truthfully; at least he can pretend he’s not whipped for a bit while longer. “You can’t call me that and expect me to walk away.”

 

She narrows her eyes and shifts a little on the bed. “I don’t _want_ you to walk away,” she says softly. “I want you to stay. I need you to.”

 

“And leave Pepper at home, huh? I’m supposed to leave my wife for you, right? Just cause you say so, just cause you’re the fuckin’ queen-”

 

“Oh for Bast’s sake, stop talking about your goddamned wife in my bed!”

 

She grasps at his hair and pulls him into a sloppy, violent kiss, teeth clashing and lips bit. There’s a sharp burst of pain and he thinks he tastes blood but he can’t stop kissing her, can’t help that he wants to pull her head back and bruise her mouth until she’s begging him to stop. He both wants to split her open and hold her like glass, and he can’t decide which would damn him more. He’s lost either way. Maybe he didn’t have to choose.

 

When she pulls away her eyes are dark and hooded, her mouth slick with his spit and bits of blood dot her chin. It’s his, he knows; she’d not gotten any injury in the desperation with which she’d kissed him, her anger protecting her and marring him instead. That’s how it should be, he thinks, the kiss he places on her jaw gentle and disarmingly sweet. He can play her game, though he knows she’s holding all the cards. At the very least, he’ll give her a run for her money.

 

“What do you want from me, pretty baby?” he asks her, and she has to press her lips closed so as not to whimper. But it’s only a matter of a touch here, a kiss there, and she’ll melt in his hands again. “Or is that not good enough?” He laughs then, a choking, pained thing so thick with want and need that it almost doesn’t sound like himself. He’s not sure if he’s even really himself now. He’s something else, a dangerous drowning wreckage caught in the drift of her.

 

“Tell me what you like,” he says again. He has to know. “Tell me what you want and you can call me daddy all you wanna. Huh? I’ll make you _that_ deal.”

 

She blinks in the warm light of her bedroom and brushes her lips against his, searches his eyes for a long moment, and then smiles. And he knows no matter how he plays this game, she will always win. He wants her to.

 

He folds her in his arms and holds her tight against his chest, strips himself of every bit of clothing, and strokes her soft skin as he explores her body once more. She moans when he calls her kitten, shudders like she’s been struck when he grabs her throat from behind and tells her to behave. And it hits him that this is what she needs and wants; she wants to lose control, hand him the reins, give him the advantage if only for a little while. He lifts her long leg and wraps it around his hip and slips inside her slowly, groaning when she arches against him and pants out his name.

 

“No,” he murmurs into her ear, smacking her ass hard enough to sting and making her squeal. “You wanna play this game? You have to know the rules. There’s no ‘Tony’ here. Just me. Just Daddy.”

 

One calloused thumb slips past her lush bottom lip and she bites down, breathing heavily and hot against his hand. He gives her a moment to collect herself and starts a slow the motion of his hips, laughing silently when she cries out in pleasure. “You like that, kitten?” he asks and she moans out a drunk affirmative, holding on to his arm wrapped tight about her chest as he starts an intense pace. It’ll be over sooner than he really wants it to, but he’s got time. He can spend the rest of the night digging her out the way he really wants if she’ll let him.

 

She feels just as good as he remember, even better because she can take him harder and deeper. She grabs hold of his thigh and pushes back against him, begging him to fuck her faster.

 

“Please,” she gasps. “Daddy, I want to cum, please.”

 

He nearly loses control right then but staves off the orgasm that approaches, buries his face in her neck and holds her still. He slides his fingers down to her clit and strokes her fast and rough, tightens the hand around her neck and speeds his thrusts until she’s cursing breathlessly and clenching tight around him. He holds her through it, slows his hips so she can catch her breath, keeps his fingers on her clit lightly.

 

“Fuck,” she says in a throaty whisper. She turns her head to his and sweetly accepts a kiss, humming in satisfaction as her breath mingles with his.

 

“Is that what you wanted?” he asks her, and she gives him the slightest nod, then sucks in air to find him still hard and moving inside her.

 

She raises a brow but the expression melts into something like bliss as he speeds his hips up once more. “Tell me you want more,” he commands, hot in her ear, and she reaches up to dig her fingers into his hair. “Ask Daddy nicely and I’ll give you whatever you want.”

 

 _Anything, anything, anything_ , his traitor heart patters. _Anything at all._

 

“You,” she moans with a grin. “All I want is you.”

 

* * *

 

“I need you to stay,” she tells him the next morning, tangled in her bedsheets and cuddled close to his chest.

 

“I can’t.”

 

Shuri raises her head and the look on her face tempts him sorely to change his mind. But he can’t abandon everything he has, not even for her, no matter what he’d said the night before.

 

“Just for a while, then?” she asks him, trying her best not to look so contrite and he sighs, thinks of a way he can stay here with her like this, even if only for little snatches of time. “I can do this alone, but I don’t want to. I want you here.”

 

Tony snorts, one last flimsy excuse coming to mind so he can say he tried. He did, he truly tried, but she made such a compelling argument. And she looked so pretty like this, naked on his chest with her braids spread haphazardly over her shoulder and her lips bitten and raw from his kisses. His pretty baby, his sweet girl. _Kitten._  He liked calling her that, liked the claws she dug into his back when he hit just the right spot.

 

"You've got Steve. You'll be fine."

 

She shakes her head, stubborn in her mission to keep him in her arms. "I don't want Steve. I don't need him. I need you." She slides up his chest and kisses him softly, the softest caress of her mouth against his. He's losing his resolve and she knows it and all she has to do is wear him down and she knows he'll break. "I don't want Captain Rogers calling me kitten." There's a hint of a smile when she says that, like she's imagined it happening and it fills him with a toxic kind of heat that spreads from his chest to his belly. 

 

"Trust me, it wouldn't even sound right coming from him."

 

"It might," she says, as if she's actually considering it. It burns him to even think that she might be. "He does have a pretty mouth."

 

"Careful, your Majesty. You're playing with fire."

 

Shuri presses her hands into his chest and straddles his waist, leaning down as a curtain of her braided hair falls around them. And as she pushes her hips down and into his, he knows he'll do what she wants, even if it means splitting his time between here and home. His heart is already split, his attention, his soul. Why not his time, too?

 

"I'm not afraid of the burn, Tony Stark," she tells him. "Are you?"

 

He shakes his head like a marionette and slides his hands along her torso, makes note of every hickey and bruise he'd left last night and he knows he could never quit her. He can't leave her alone. She's a drug and he's hopelessly addicted. He was going to stay, in some way, just because she wanted him to, and there was nothing he could do about it. He makes love to her again that morning before she's had her breakfast and flies home guilty and grinning to his wife and hides the scratches on his back like there was absolutely nothing wrong.

 

And he stays. At least for now.

 

 _You're saturating me. H_ o _w could I let this bring me b_ _ack to my knees?_


	3. something wicked this way comes

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comments and kudos are much loved and appreciated. Sorry about the wait! Hopefully the next chapter won't take so long.

And so it goes, for a while.

 

Tony spends most of his week in New York because there’s no real reason he should have to deprive Pepper of his attention, not when she needs him most. She grows steadily every day, her belly swelling softly and her skin glowing as she gets closer and closer to her due date. They’re anticipating a February baby, a son, and there’s a level of excitement that stirs in Tony’s belly at the thought of a boy all his own.  Pepper decides she wants to do the nursery up in shades of cream and green and blue, soothing colors that mimic the swell and surf of the ocean, and he doesn’t object one bit. They pick out furniture and discuss carpeting and look at expensive diaper genies as the days and weeks tick along.

 

To anyone who didn’t know better, it’d look like everything was how it should be. A dutiful husband, a loyal friend, part of a dream team of minds that could reverse what was done and win back what was lost. His work was important to him; fixing all of this was a priority, but so was his wife and his friends. And if he was a little closer to the queen of Wakanda than anticipated, well…she was young and he was a mentor of sorts, helping her navigate the careful, treacherous waters of ruling a country at so tender an age after losing so many close to her.

 

No one ever needed to know the truth of the matter.

 

No one ever needed to know that on the weekends, he belonged to Shuri way past the lines of propriety.

 

In public, when he touched down in Wakanda and joined Bruce and the back-and-forth Jane Foster in their mission to fix the world, everything was as it should be. Shuri was her usual gracious self, kind and witty and fun in the only way someone who had suffered the loss of a brother and father and the man she loved really could be. There was an unspoken bond between the four of them, a comradery that Tony found oddly comforting. And maybe he was a little closer to Shuri than to Jane, and maybe Bruce watched him from the corner of his eye every once in a while, but there was never anything inappropriate between them. Not in the lab, not at lunch or dinner after work, not even when their progress stalled and back slid and the queen got frustrated and turned to him for guidance and assurance. To anyone who didn’t know better, who didn’t _know_ , it only looked as if Tony had taken her under his wing. She was another kindred soul and he cared and that was all it was; a friendship, a kinship.

 

But when there was no one around, in the depths of the palace, in the glimmering, sensual darkness of her scented bedroom, Shuri was no queen, no scientist. She was a spoiled, teasing little minx, irresistible and delicious, who sucked hickies into his flesh and swiped foreign salves over the bruises to hide them. Depending on the day, she could be an absolute terror to deal with-bossy and demanding, flirting with him endlessly and pushing him away, taking him to the depths of want where she wound him up and refused to let him go. But other times she was his _Kitten_ , and god, did he love to hear her purr.

 

There was something about taking her into his arms and holding her tight, pressed up against his chest as she sobbed for mercy and begged him to cum. It was almost intoxicating to push her into the mattress, her round little ass high in the air and marks from where the crop had struck her peppering her thighs as he stroked in deep and slow. She would whine then, sob out his name until he corrected her and then she’d gasp out _Daddy_ , stumbling over the syllables when he finally let her orgasm catch up to her. He liked her breathless and sweating, the shimmering gleam of her skin a direct contrast with the flushed red of his own. She made him feel less like a shadow and more like a man, like a red-blooded animal, like he was _wanted_. Such a big man, Tony was, when she clenched down around him and clung to him desperately and looked at him in the throes of her passion as if he alone held the key to the universe.

 

Maybe he did. Maybe it was how he could make her arch her back and shatter around his dick, then scoop the little pieces of her back together so he could do it all over again. _Maybe_. Or maybe she was fucking with him; maybe he needed this more than she did. Didn’t matter which, honestly.

 

It was, of course, supposed to only be for the fun of it. They’d talked about it once, lying in bed together as her fingers trailed the scar on his chest and her legs wound with his. If no one ever knew, no one ever needed to be told and once everything was fixed, they could go back to how it was before.

 

“We stop this, after everything is done.”

 

“Hmmm.”

 

“Don’t ‘hmm’ me, Tony Stark,” she says in that bossy, steeled tone of hers that did nothing but rile him up and make him want to fuck her senseless. “I’m serious.”

 

Tony sighs and turns to her, daring to press a kiss into her still sweaty brow. Sometimes she lets him cuddle with her like this, skin to skin and chest to chest. Other days, she hopped from the messy sheets and showered and expected him to be gone before she finished toweling out. Those times were a little demeaning, but he understood. Keep it fun, don’t take it seriously.

 

But a little post coital comfort never hurt anyone, every once in a while.

 

“Sure thing, pretty baby. The second lover boy comes hurtling back from wherever he’s languishing, we’re over.” He narrows his eyes in the golden light and catches her gaze for a very long moment. “You don’t have to tell me twice.”

 

She doesn’t. He won’t insist on staying where he isn’t wanted. She was using him right now, he knew it, she knew it. But it didn’t mean he couldn’t pretend if only for a little while.

 

And if he takes it to heart that she seems reluctant to actually follow through, well…that’s his business.

 

“Good,” she finally responds, letting out a breath slow and steady, and he feels it tickle the skin of his chest. “There’s…you know. No reason this should be anything other than-“

 

“Oh, I know. I’m married, in case you’ve forgotten.” He hadn’t. Not really. He really had tried, but he’d refused to take off his wedding ring even for Shuri. He had to ground himself some sort of way, to remind himself where home was. Home was Pepper and the baby to come, his son. Home was not the warm sheets he lay on now, or the young woman in his arms, no matter how much a tiny part of him wished it could be.

 

“I haven’t,” she huffs, and she rolls over off of him, her body rigid and unyielding now. He’s pissed her off. He hates when he does this, can’t shut up about the illicitness of what they’re doing long enough to just enjoy it. And he knows he can’t really take it back or change her mind, so he doesn’t. He lets her get up from the bed and stomp into the bathroom, the rattle of drawers and bottles before he hears the shower that signals he should go.

 

So he does.

 

His bed is cold and unfamiliar. The room he’s given while in Wakanda is rarely used when he here; he’s almost always in bed with Shuri or, on the occasion he pops over when she’s in a mood or on the rag, hanging out with Bruce. He settles back on the crisp sheets and stares at the ceiling for a long while, thinking a future where they’ve succeeded in their near impossible mission, where he can retire finally and raise his son and maybe make a few more kids sometime down the line. He’s not that old; he’ll only be 67 when the baby graduates high school. Hell, he'll be done with college if he takes after his dad. That’s not that old, not really.

 

He’s thinking of possible baby names for a boy, trying to avoid Howards and Peters, when there’s a soft knock at his door. He glances at the clock, raising a brow to find that it’s damn near midnight and hauls himself from the bed, tugging the low slung pajama pants he wears up his hips.

 

He half expects it’s a pouty lipped Shuri waiting for him, shifting from foot to foot to apologize for being such a little bitch earlier. The other half anticipates Bruce, in for a night cap because he can’t sleep and the nightmares are getting to him. Instead, he’s greeted by a silent Dora, face stoic as ever and shoulders straight. And directly to her right is a tall, slender woman, beautiful and regal and nearly supernatural.

 

He knows right away that it’s the Queen Mother. He knows too, that this isn’t just a courtesy call. He swallows but remembers his manners and tries his best to greet her with respect and what he thinks might be a friendly smile.

 

“Your Majesty.”

 

There’s a flutter of dark lashes and a quirk to her mouth and then Tony’s whole body jolts like he’s been struck when she talks. He thinks this is where Shuri got it from, that odd otherworldly sort of aura that captured and entangled. And he thinks, with his breath held and his hand clenched at the door, that the woman in front of him has mastered that seductive quality to a sharp point, a point that could pierce him through and slice him from navel to nose. He wasn’t playing games with a 21 year old girl; Ramonda was not to be trifled with.

 

“Mr. Stark,” she intones, her voice dark honey and sharp obsidian and he thinks just her voice has taken a few years of his life. “We haven’t gotten the chance to get acquainted.”

 

For better or worse, Tony knows, tonight, they will.

* * *

 

 

The most he knows about the Queen Mother is this:

 

She’d been out of the city when the battle had happened. She’d had to watch her elderly mother, two sisters, and a niece disappear right before her eyes. She’d had no idea, on the harried rush back to the capitol, if either of her children had survived. And she’d been distraught upon learning that her son had turned to ashes, the second time she’d had to assume him dead.

 

Only this time, there didn’t seem to be any reconciliation coming. There was no Jabari tribe to rescue the near dead king. There were no happy endings.

 

And so, in her grief, she’d retreated inside herself and locked herself in her room and only came out on the occasion that Shuri needed to see her. It was a very difficult couple of months after the snap. Okoye had done much of the heavy lifting alongside M’Baku, while Shuri had barricaded inside her laboratory for weeks and Ramonda had lain in bed and wondered where the hell it had all gone wrong.

 

Were they being punished for something?

 

She tells him all this, in cool, fluid tones over wine and little orange cookies that he’s too nervous to even eat. He drinks the wine, though. It’s better than talking right now. He doesn’t think she’d like to be interrupted anyway, so he just listens.

 

And by the time she finishes, her hands placed gingerly over her knee, her eyes watching him curiously, he thinks he understands her intent.

 

“So…you know.”

 

“I’m her mother,” she says with a wry smile. It’s humorless and hollow and Tony knows nothing short of bringing back T’Challa will ever get her to smile for real. He imagines she’s uncommonly beautiful when she really smiles; she’s incredibly so even with that sharp, near deadly smirk she’s got going on right now. There’s no light behind her eyes and her jaw flexes when she talks, but she’s still a looker.

 

“I know, I just mean…we’ve been…sorta-“

 

“Do you have any children, Mr. Stark?”

 

He’s not sure then how much she knows then because if she knew the entire truth, she’d know he has one on the way and that he’s married, very much so. He fights the urge to cover his left hand and the wedding ring that still rests on his finger so she can’t tell, but he’s sure that if he moves now, she’ll notice. So he keeps still.

 

“Uh, no. Not yet.”

 

“A parent knows everything their child does. They know their strengths and weaknesses, their loves, their hates, their every move. A mother doubly so. So yes, I know.” She shifts a bit in the little seat she’s perched on and shrugs gracefully. Everything she does is graceful.

 

“Besides, you’ve not been nearly as discreet as you would imagine.”

 

And that, he realizes, is why she’s here. She doesn’t really care that he’s cheating on his wife. She probably already knows that he’s got a kid coming. She’s only worried about her daughter’s reputation and the integrity of the Wakandan throne, especially considering how fragile everything is right now and that the almost thread thin peace that exists between the tribes could be broken simply because of their affair.

 

Tony bites the inside of his cheek and nods and lets her continue.

 

“I know how my daughter is. I’ve spoiled her all her life, so had her father and her brother as well. We indulged her every whim and catered to all her needs and sheltered her from the bad that exists outside our borders. I suppose I tried to instill some sort of morality into her, but the world is a very desolate place right now. So she takes what she wants when she wants it and uses it to serve her and I suppose you were what she wanted.”

 

It sounds so impersonal when she puts it that way. He was simply a distraction, a diversion, an amusement. It hurt when it shouldn’t have. He probably should have known that. He could have sworn he knew that already, but hearing it aloud wasn’t very fun. He covers the shock of hearing it by offering the queen mother a slight smile and clearing his throat.

 

“Okay.”

 

“Perhaps the two of you should discuss means of keeping all this undetectable as possible. I cannot imagine the sort of conflict that would arise if the council learned you were creeping in the bed of their young queen.”

 

He can’t either. He doesn’t know much about the council, only that they were intimidating people who glared at him like the outsider he was. He had a feeling that if anything came out about this, he’d be swiftly taken care of. And he really wanted to meet his son, at least.

 

In retrospect, he thinks that maybe that was his sign to put an end to all this. But he wasn’t thinking with his head so much as he was thinking with his dick and in some ways, his heart. So, he doesn’t end anything. He just gets a little craftier, sneakier.

 

The queen mother leaves him with a meaningful glance back, a look she shoots him every time she sees him from here on. She never comes to his room again and gives him any lectures about his lack of discretion so he assumes he’s doing alright. And Shuri never mentions anything about it, so he doesn’t bring it up either because he assumes she doesn’t know. He does a lot of assuming and not a lot of real thinking and he knows that one day it’s going to bite him in the ass and hard.

 

But for the time being, he pushes it all aside to play games with Shuri while they work, to drag his fingers up the hem of her little skirts and pinch, to breathe across her bare neck while she’s looking over schematics and equations. They are quick, almost imperceptible little things; if she doesn’t react, no one would ever notice. But she does react, in ways that only he can tell. He can see how her skin prickles when he touches her, or how her breathing shifts when he brushes past her. He both ignores her and dotes on her, a hot and cold back and forth that frustrates her to no end. He’s not sure what tickles him more; making her melt like chocolate in his arms when he finally has her alone, or making her so mad that she ties him down and fights him before she fucks him.

 

It’s probably a tie.

 

In the middle of all this, their progress on the machine tip toes forward a little at a time. There’s the hope that they’ll have a solution soon, an anticipation of sorts that everything they’ve been working for since the world went to shit will all have worked out and then life can go back to being as normal as possible. A very treacherous part of him doesn’t want things to go back to normal and he hates himself for it. He’d started all this with a clear focus and a determination and he was losing himself because of soft lips and kitten’s claws.

 

He calls Pepper one day just to get his head back on track.

 

“I know you’ve told me over and over that there’s no reason to rush, but…”

 

“And there isn’t,” she says, puttering around in the kitchen on her day off. She’ll have to quit working soon and take it easy. Her steps have turned into a sort of waddle and her belly gets in the way of most everything she does now. It’s ridiculously adorable and he thinks maybe he should give Wakanda a break for a few weekends. He wants to spend time with Pepper. He wants to cuddle on the couch and stroke her belly and talk to his son as if he could hear. The baby books all say he can.

 

“But it feels like if we don’t do this now, we’re going to lose something.”

 

She gives him a sympathetic look and sighs. “Tony. Look, it’s not going to bring anyone back if you try to rush through this all and mess something up. It’s better to take your time and go as slow as you can until you know for sure you can get back in time. I mean, who actually has attempted something like this before?”

 

He shrugs. “Nobody that we know of.”

 

“There you go. Even the smartest person in the world can’t fix this just like that. It’s going to take time and there’s going to be setbacks…but it’ll happen. Just take it easy on yourself.” She pauses and offers him a soft smile, one that is both caring and even a little bit knowing. “And tell her Majesty to take it easy on herself, as well.”

 

He blinks stupidly for a long second at that, the reality of what he’d done just that morning coming back to him as his kind, unfailingly thoughtful wife offered a little wisdom and gentleness to the woman he was seeing behind her back. And for the first time in a while, he could feel the guilt settle heavy in his belly like a stone. He twists his wedding ring and does his best impression of a smile, but it doesn’t feel right. And Pepper, ever perceptive, catches the emotions that filter across his face.

 

“Tony…is she…”

 

“Hm?”

 

“Is she okay?”

 

It’s said with the kind of concern that only one older woman could have for a younger and that just makes all this worse. Jesus. What the hell kind of person was he?

 

“I mean, she’s…yeah? I guess she's okay.”

 

Pepper rolls her eyes. “I’m only asking because you two seem to be close.”

 

“I guess so. She seems to like Bruce more, though, I don’t know.”

 

Pepper laughs. “Nope. She likes you. You get her, I think. And you don’t treat her like a child, either, so I imagine that helps. But you have to remember she’s only…what, 20...21?”

 

“20,” he says almost automatically. "Almost 21." She’ll be 21 in another month’s time and he has this wild, marginally fucked up idea to buy her a butt plug for her birthday and make her wear it all day until he gets a chance to give her his present. He tries not thinking about that when his wife is on the other end of a video call, but it filters through no matter what he does and he rubs his face, hoping to god he isn’t blushing right now.

 

“21 is so young. God, sometimes I wish I were…anyway, I’m getting off on a tangent.”

 

“You do that a lot, Pep,” he says with a slight grin. Maybe they can change the subject, or something. He doesn’t want to talk about his mistress to his wife. “It’s gotta be the hormones. You’re practically an elephant, you never forget a thing.”

 

She narrows her eyes but there’s no actual bite to the expression in them. “Ha, ha. Are you calling me fat, Tony? Cause if you are, it’s your fault.”

 

“Takes two to tango, and all that.”

 

“Whatever.”

 

She breaks off with a soft giggle and pushes her hair out of her face, leaning forward a bit so that her face is closer to the screen. Under her chin, in the distance, he can see the swell of her belly and he thinks to himself that his son is there, growing and kicking and moving a little at a time. Only a few more months and he’ll be a father.

 

“Look, I’m just saying that because you know her well, maybe you can help keep her from completely falling to pieces. She’s got a lot to deal with. More than I think any of us probably do.”

 

“Yeah.”

 

“And you get what’s going in her head, probably.”

 

He doesn’t but he shrugs and then nods as if perhaps he does. He really has no idea what Shuri’s thinking most of the time because she won’t tell him. She’ll fuck him, sit on his face and drag her nails down his back and then kick him out her bed when he says something stupid she doesn’t like. But she doesn’t confide in him. It’s probably a good thing if she doesn’t, he realizes. He’ll really do something stupid then.

 

“Try and look out for her, okay? She’s really just a kid, Tony, and I’m sure she’ll appreciate having someone who gets it in her corner.”

 

She probably doesn’t want him to do a damned thing but eat her out and fix the Happening but he doesn’t say that. He agrees and hangs up the phone and wonders how in the hell his life had gotten to this point.

 

He tries, though, to take Pepper’s advice to heart in the only way he can. Late nights, when the other two have gone back to the palace to sleep and it’s just the two of them in the lab, he sorts through equation after equation to see where they’d gone wrong yet again. He lets her rest her head on the desk and doesn’t say a word, opting instead to spread his jacket across her shoulders and dim the lights that he doesn’t need so she can nap as long as possible. He knows she barely sleeps. And he knows she’ll burn herself out if she doesn’t at least try and catch a break here and there.

 

It’s the little things, the sweet ones that will eventually do him in. And though he can handle giving and giving and never getting in return, the occasions she treats him more like a lover and less like something to pass the time with is what slowly drives him insane.

 

He knows when it’s happening. He doesn’t know if he can truly stop it. He’s always been a man of passion, of feeling and emotion no matter how much he tried pretending otherwise. At night, he thinks of all the people he’s maybe loved and definitely loved; Rhodey one of the first and Pepper after. There’s moments he thinks he could have loved Steve if everything hadn’t been so fucked. Or maybe it’s just that Bucky Barnes had been in the way and once again he’s falling for someone unobtainable and out of his reach, divided by the whisper of a ghost of a man that Tony would never get the big deal about.

 

At least he had Bruce, in that loyal almost innocent way that he needed more than anything. There was an unwavering faith in Tony there, even though he knew about the kiss and watched the two of them with sharp, near suspicious eyes. Perhaps he was simply trying to save them from whatever hell they were falling into. Maybe they should have listened, should have took heed and cut the cord that tangled around them and tied them together. He was a dog on a chain for her; she was his albatross.

 

But he couldn’t make himself stop no matter how many close calls, no matter the ringing in the back of his head that screamed he’d rue all of this eventually.

 

_It all falls to pieces. It all crashes down._

* * *

 

He’s half asleep in her bed when Shuri figures out exactly how to go backward.

 

She does that sometimes, figures up schematics and formulas in her head while he’s nibbling on her neck or tracing the Greek alphabet into her skin. Sometimes he’s sure she cums as hard as she does because she’s secretly doing mathematical equations while he’s fucking her. And he should probably be offended but he really can’t be. Her mind is a massive turn on, almost more so that her pretty lips around his dick, or how she throws her head back as she grasps his head between her thighs.

 

But right then, she’s curled up in her blankets, the doors of her balcony opened to let cool night air in. Hair hides most of her face as she leans forward and fiddles with her holos; he’d told her before there was no use in taking work with her to bed, but she was as stubborn as he could be. She never listened. And so, when she gasps, softly and a little stunned, his eyes blink open and the fog over his head starts to clear.

 

She’s found something.

 

“I’ve got it,” she tells him, in a voice unsure and a little bit precious, but it’s also on the verge of being excited and hopeful and they’re one more step closer, a little bit further along and soon…soon, he’ll bring back Peter and Stephen and everyone else.

 

Even Bucky. He hasn’t a clue how he’s going to deal with that when it happens, but at least right now, he knows it’ll probably happen. And soon.

 

“Whatcha got?” He pushes himself up and scratches his chest and cozies up to her because she’s distracted and won’t push him away. And she doesn’t. If anything, she leans in closer to him, her eyes tired but shining in the light and the hint of hope all over her pretty face. He takes a long moment to memorize her like this in case she’s never this open for him to see it again, and he thinks then of how she’s not just pretty to him anymore. She’s absolutely beautiful, his Madonna, the North Star in his sky.

 

He knows, as she pushes her braids from her face and starts to tell him, tentatively, but excitedly, what she’d changed, how she’d figured all this out, that he’s falling.

 

He _has_ fallen.

 

 _Fuck_.

 

It’s not just sex anymore. It’s not just comfort or grief or bad decisions made to pass the time between then and later. And no matter how many times she tells him they’ll stop this once everything is fixed, that it’ll all be swept under the rug as if it’d never happened, he knows in that moment that he’s never going to be able to live that way. He won’t be able to pretend, he won’t be able to forget.

 

He’ll keep trying, though, and so he swallows his panic and listens, tickles her when she beams proudly, and laughs along with her as she teases him playfully. She’s in a good mood and he’ll take it, he’ll make her sigh and cum and laugh and she’ll drift off to sleep and he’ll sneak out of her room and back into his the way he always does. Only this time she tugs him close, her limbs lethargic and her eyes drooping as she finally decides to curl up and rest, and she begs him to stay.

 

“Please?”

 

“You actually want me in bed with you? I snore.”

 

She chuckles and shakes her head, smiles at him as if he were more than what he truly is to her. And Tony’s treacherous heart clings to that little bit she gives him like a life line, drinks every stingy drop in and he’s already laying back down, already tossing the blankets back to pull her close to him and snuggle her body against his own. _Like lovers_.

 

“No you don’t. You do wiggle a lot, though,” she says, and she pulls her hair over her shoulder so his chin can fit right in the crook of it, so he can get a good inhale of her scent, of the sweat that still lingers on her skin, of the smell of him that’s entwined with her. He takes one long, deep breath in and then another, and another until he’s got her swirling in his lungs and in his bloodstream.

 

“I’ll try to keep still, then, pretty baby,” he says softly, and he thinks she sighs, but she’s asleep before he can say much else. He takes a long moment just to watch, to reach out and touch her face ever so gently and she doesn’t even shift in the bed. She’s so far into sleep that she isn’t aware of him bowing his head and breathing her name and trying so very hard not to break his own heart.

 

He’s fallen in love and it’s going to fucking kill him.

 

He wakes the next morning to the sound of her shower going and he groans at the bright Wakandan sun. It’s probably late, too late for him to try sneaking back down to his room, so he doesn’t bother. He scoops up his clothes from the night before and sits on the edge of the bed, and he thinks.

 

There’s a churning in his stomach when the water stops. She’ll revert to how she always is and ask him why he’s still here and he’ll feel a little part of him wilt away, because he wants nothing else in the world but for her to just be sweet to him. She doesn’t ever have to love him. He’s not stupid enough to think she possibly could. But it couldn’t possibly hurt her to act like she at least likes him. Instead, she seems to get off on treating him like a walking vibrator. And it hurts a lot more than it should.

 

 _You shouldn’t even be doing this_ , he reminds himself again, but there’s no use in pretending like he’ll actually stop. What scares him is he’s not sure now if he’ll even be able to quit if Shuri made him.

 

He’s broken out his thoughts to the feel of her arms around his neck, her lips on his still bare shoulders and neither of them speak for a moment. For a moment he can pretend that this is right and no one else exists, that he’s not married and she’s not so young and that no one would care if they were together like this. He hates how easy it is to push the thought of Pepper aside when Shuri’s in his arms, and she slides around to plop down in his lap, her nose nuzzling his jawline as she curls into his embrace. And god help him, he holds her like the precious thing she his, presses a kiss to her forehead, whispers a soft good morning so that she smiles all bright and beautiful.

 

“You didn’t wiggle,” she tells him, yawning a little bit. “Nor snore. You could probably get away with staying here more often if you wanted.”

 

He doesn’t even want to entertain the thought of that, so he shakes his head and laughs as if it’s not all he wants right now.

 

“I could, but then you’d get tired of rolling over and finding me drooling as I sleep.”

 

“I wouldn’t,” she protests, a hint of a smile on her lips.

 

“You would. And you sleep like you’re fighting somebody. I woke up in the middle of the night with your foot in my stomach and your armpit in my face.”

 

She does giggle then, holding on to him as she leans back and stretches out her long legs in his lap. She’s wearing one of her little twill lab skirts again, the kind that button up the front, and a pair of sneakers. She barely looks her age, and with her hair up in the buns she likes to wear, he shudders at the image of her being a teenager, a high school student, underage and not at all legal and he almost slides her off his lap to gather himself. But the fantasy takes root and he doesn’t have time for the loathing that will follow later. She’s straddling him and she presses her forehead to his and looks into his eyes as if she’s searching for a secret.

 

“Why do you leave when we’re done?” she finally asks. He gapes at her as if she’s stupid, as if _he’s_ stupid, and doesn’t speak for a long moment.

 

“Because you want me to leave. I don’t stay where I’m not wanted, Shuri.”

 

He says it as seriously as he can manage, tries to put some gravity behind that statement. Maybe she’ll understand how hard it is for him to tug on his pants and shirt at 2 am when all he wants is to pull her atop him and fall asleep to the sound of her soft breathing. But if she did, what kind of power would she hold over him then? She’s already got the game going in her direction. He doesn’t need her to pull another winning card.

 

Shuri frowns and shakes her head, looking so very young and so he doesn’t move his hands from her hips. It seems to ground her.

 

“No. I mean…maybe I wanted you to think I did. But I don't want you to go, not really.”

 

“Then why the games?”

 

“Because.”

 

 _Because_ isn’t answer enough but Tony’s scared of pushing her for more. He keeps his eyes on hers and presses his lips closed so he doesn’t spill every dirty dark secret living inside him. _Why don’t you just ask me to stay? Why don’t you tell me to pull you close and keep you warm? I would. I want to._

 

“Because you’re a spoiled little shit and like fucking with people’s time? That’s sleep I’m missing cause I have to dress and haul ass back to my room.” It’s nothing at all to do with sleep but he’s not going to admit that she’s really fucking with his emotions. Not right now, he’s not.

 

She rolls her eyes at that but doesn’t make a move to get off him. Instead, she settles in further, wiggles her bottom a bit and smirks to find him half hard. “Do you get off on the idea of cuddling me?” she asks, almost laughing at him when she does so but he pays her no mind.

 

“I get off on a lot of shit,” he tells her and she grins then, white teeth gleaming dangerously. “Is everything about sex to you?”

 

“I’m a sexually active young woman,” she says with a breathy sort of cadence. “I happen to like sex. A lot.”

 

“Don’t I know it.”

 

“If you can’t keep up, I can find someone who will.”

 

The hand on her hip tightens and she giggles then cause she knows she’s pushing all his buttons. “Like you would. As if you could.” He says it cockily, lies to himself and to her because he knows for a fact she could have whomever she wanted. He’s seen how people look at her, noticed glances her way that speak of more than just affection or loyalty to the queen. There’s desire there too, raw and unfiltered in some of their eyes, more subdued and a little bit restrained in others. But it’s there and she could have her pick of lovers if she wanted. For whatever reason, right now, she wants him.

 

“I have no time to vet new lovers, though,” she tells him. Her fingers slide up his shoulders and his neck, her manicured nails catching on the hairs at the nape and then digging through his scalp. He’s sure his hair’s a wreck and he needs to dye it again, get all the grey out so she can pretend and he can too that he’s a lot younger than what he is. “You’ll have to do. And really, you do alright-“

 

“Just alright?”

 

“I mean, I don’t have much room for comparison.”

 

Tony sighs and closes his eyes for a moment because there’s a barb behind her tone, a soft but deadly reminder that he’d not only forsaken his vows to his wife but taken the virginity of a grieving little queen who’d only needed him for guidance and comfort. He could have said no. He should have. But he’d gotten off on the idea of being her first, had almost drowned in the pleasure it gave to him to have claimed that spot first. He was an awful person, but at least he knew he was.

 

“You’ll have better one day,” he tells her, kissing her cheek sweetly. Self depreciation is his get out of jail free card, and he feels a lot like he’s being held in custody. “And they’ll be a couple of lucky sons of bitches, too, when I’m done with you.”

 

She laughs again, this one not nearly as hollow as he’s used to. He likes to think that he entertains her if nothing else. “Oh? So that’s what you’re doing here then. This isn’t at all about the machine or undoing anything, is it? You’re teaching me something else.”

 

He raises a brow. “Want me to? Cause I really haven’t been doing anything.”

 

She tugs at his hair the way she always does when she wants him and he leans back a bit, lets her grind her body down on his lap and he hisses a bit because all she’d have to do is slip off her panties and pull him free from his pajama pants and ride him hard and fast and he’d be fine.

 

Instead she kisses him slow and steady, breathing against his mouth, her body rocking back and forth as he pushes his hips into the warmth of her thighs. He lies back and brings her with him, until she’s sliding up his body and moaning out his name, and he waits on the signal that she wants him to take her but it never comes. She seems content to just lay on him like this, her heart thudding in her chest and the necklace she wears swinging from her throat as she kisses him sporadically, then pulls back and watches him.

 

It’s both unnerving and sweet and he doesn’t know if he wants her to stop or not.

 

“Tony,” she starts, her voice all Shuri now, no hint of teasing or malice, none of the authority he hears when she’s bossing him around the lab or when she’s in council. She’s just a 21 year old girl with the world on her shoulders and a people to lead. And she’s scared, he can tell, in just the brief glance she gives him, as she lowers her eyes to his throat and draws in a breath.

 

“Yeah?”

 

She doesn’t say anything for a moment, and Tony thinks maybe she’s going to end this, that perhaps she’s going to stop whatever they’re doing and he wants her to so badly because he knows he can’t stop. But he knows it’ll kill him if she does. He prepares for the blow, but it never comes.

 

“What if this doesn’t work? What if we can’t fix this?”

 

He honestly had thought of that more times than he wants to count but he doesn’t want her to consider it. She doesn’t need the added stress of possible failure and he’ll do whatever it takes to keep her from suffocating underneath that kind of pressure.

 

“We’ll fix it.”

 

“But what if we can’t?” She shakes her head and blinks furiously, trying hard not to look like she’s on the verge of a breakdown but he knows she is. “What If I can’t bring everyone back? My brother or my grandmother or my aunts or cousins…Peter Parker. I know you’re counting on me to bring him back, I know he means a lot to you-“

 

“Shuri.”

 

“I just don’t want to let anyone down. I can’t. I wasn’t meant to be queen.” She chokes out a pained laugh and meets his eyes and he aches so much for her. And it’s then that he claims her, every little bit of her, the good and the bad, and in his heart, no matter how this ends and when, she is his baby and she will always have him. “There was always the possibility that I’d need to take the crown, but no one really considered it. Not seriously. Oh, they trained me, just in case. Baba was never anything but prepared. But I never…we always thought he’d live forever and then that T’Challa would follow and I wouldn’t have to ever assume anything. I didn’t want to. I wish I didn’t have to.”

 

He knows there’s tribe leaders waiting in the wings for her to abdicate and throw in the towel and give up. But she’s got the heart of a panther and so many eyes on her that there’s no way she could reasonably give up without it haunting her forever. He knows she won’t, even if it drags her into the ground.

  

“Sometimes we’re dealt a hand we didn’t ask for. Sometimes all we can do is pretend as though we have all the answers when we don’t. All you can do is push forward and try.” He smooths her braids away from her face and makes her look at him. “You asked me to stay. I’m here.”

 

“I know. But is it enough?” He has no real answer for that. He doesn’t know if he’s enough or not. He knows he wishes to god he were. He wishes he were her everything, but that’s a tall order.

 

“I don’t know if I’ll be much help with all the politics but it doesn’t hurt to have someone in your corner.”

 

She smiles, leans into him and rests her head on his shoulder. She feels so good like this, pliable and needing and wanting him. He can’t help it if his hands start to wander, or if he’s getting a little aroused at the feel of her next to him. Of course, when she notices, she pushes up and smacks him, though there’s not much strength behind it.

 

“I just poured out my heart to you,” she scoffs, trying hard to appear like she’s angry but she isn’t. He knows she isn’t from how soft her eyes are. “I just told you my worst fears and you react by getting a hard on.”

 

“I was hard before you even crawled into my lap, honey bunny.”

 

She wrinkles her nose at the pet name but when he stands and pulls her into his arms, holds for a moment longer, she doesn’t pull away. “I like 'pretty baby' better,” she murmurs into his chest and he hums the way she likes. She likes to feel the vibrations there, to listen to his heart skipping along, to the rush of blood in his veins. And it’s all for her. A heart divided, but the biggest part of it beats for her now.

 

She makes sure no one is watching when they slip from her room, though he’s sure that the Queen Mother has eyes everywhere. Her fingers brush his in the back of the car that takes them to the lab and he doesn’t pull away. He stares out the window and lets her slip her hand in his and he floats above the clouds and everything around him and pretends that he’s really hers. She watches him in the elevator and stands just a little closer, her body more relaxed than usual, and he remembers Ramonda’s warning and thinks of all he has to lose if anyone finds out.

 

Jane and Bruce wait for them near the large windows overlooking the city, coffee in hand and a smile on either face.

 

“So we’re thinking that we’ll try to get to five minutes today, the same as when we went forward,” Jane starts off, and she plugs in the formula that Shuri hands her as Bruce gets the machine up and running.

 

“Are we doing inanimate objects again?” Tony asks, mostly for something to say because he feels a little out of sorts. It’s been an odd morning and he doesn’t want anyone to know. But of course they probably do. Bruce glances in his direction and raises a brow.

 

“You look a little tired, Tony.”

 

“Didn’t sleep much. You know I usually don’t.”

 

Bruce smiles. “Hey, I told you to FaceTime Pep when you get like that. I know you probably sleep better after you talk to her. Did she say how the doctor appointment was?”

 

He clenches his cup of coffee and darts his eyes over to Shuri, who is actively working to avoid listening in on the subject. But he knows she’s heard; she pauses for only a second in her conversation with Jane and her spine stiffens and he wants to sink into the floor because he’s talking about his wife while his girlfriend is in the room.

 

Well, maybe it’s payback for all those times she’d brought up Bucky around him. Doesn’t make him feel any better though.

 

“Uh, no, she hadn’t. I haven’t gotten the chance to talk to her about it, but look, when she lets me know, I’ll tell you. Or you can ask Rhodey, if you get the chance. I think he went along this go round.”

 

Bruce nods, his face curious and Tony gestures to Shuri, makes a face that reads he’ll tell him later. He searches for a decent enough lie in the space of time it takes for him to help Bruce with the machine and then they’re setting everything up, the soft hum in the lab only punctuated by a cough here and there.

 

“You okay, Foster?”

 

Jane sniffles and nods, her eyes glittered with moisture and her nose red. “Just allergies. I think.”

 

“You sure, Jane?” Bruce asks, his face as concerned as it always is when it comes to people around him and for a second, Tony thinks he’s in love with him again, with that sweet, gentle man, a beast lurking inside him that haunts him at every second, a mind as brilliant as any he’d ever seen. But he looks over to Shuri and every thud of his heart speeds up when she catches his eye and she almost smiles.

 

Almost. He loves her almost smiles, too, though not nearly as much as the ones she gives when he makes her laugh.

 

“I’m sure,” she says with a sort of laugh and then she sneezes again, prompting Shuri to jump away dramatically and giggle. “Or I hope so. God, this is going to suck if it’s the flu.” She wipes her nose again and clears her throat, then takes in a breath.

 

“Alright. So. We’re going to see if this works. And yes, Tony, inanimate objects because I don’t know what would happen if we sent something flesh and blood back just yet.”

 

There were plans to do it with the process of going forward in time but no one wanted to play guinea pig and Shuri wasn’t willing to sacrifice any innocent animals. Sunglasses and nodes and baseball caps had to suffice. So far, nothing weird had happened to any of the stuff they’d put through the machine. But Jane had also told them that moving forward would be a little easier than going back. It was much easier to write on a blank slate than to rewrite history and a lot less dangerous, too.

 

Bruce places the shades in their usual spot and steps back slowly, as Shuri plugs in the formula she’d thought of the night before. “Our usual?” he asks her and she nods, glancing up to her holo.

 

“Initial test will be fifteen seconds. We’ll build from there.”

 

Jane takes a picture of the landing spot and then counts backward, from fifteen, at the same moment that Shuri presses the go button. And for those fifteen seconds, they hold their breath and stare at Jane’s phone for any indication that the shades will appear.

 

It happens nearly like magic, but the tell tale sign of Tony’s Ray Bans pop up in the picture at precisely the fifteenth second. He realizes that it’s worked at the same moment that Shuri does and she looks around her holo to the launching pad to find the shades gone. Its as if the entire world had come down to this one moment and for a second he thinks he’ll cry. But then Bruce is jumping up and down and hugging Jane, so he pulls Shuri close to him, taking a split second to slide his hands beneath her shirt and touch her bare skin and tell her that she’d done good.

 

His smart, beautiful, pretty baby.

 

Her laughter is subdued, her countenance nearly unsure as if she can’t believe she’d actually done this. She lets out the tense breath she’d been holding and moves away from him before Bruce can notice, presses her palms against the machine and bows her head.

 

“We still have to bring it back,” she says, as if to sober them all. It only marginally works, because Bruce is sliding next to her at the helm of the machine, plugging in the code necessary to bring the shades back.

 

“Fuck, how long has it been since-“

 

“I swore I had the timer on this entire time,” Jane says with a laugh. “Whoops. But no worries! We can just over guestimate and say…two minutes? It’ll show up when it needs to then, I guess.”

 

It’s what Bruce puts into the machine and just like they figured it would, the shades reappear in their usual spot, completely intact and ready for another round.

 

They test the machine four more times before they hit a snag in the formula. Whatever Shuri had thought up that night had only been enough to get them moving toward almost a minute into the past; at one minute fifteen, the shades refuse to budge and nothing else happens. It’s frustrating, mostly for Shuri, who growls and stands up from her spot at the holos, storms from the lab and goes outside. Jane seems to take the brunt of failure onto herself while Bruce quietly goes back to the computers and to the formula to see what could make the difference.

 

And Tony goes outside to see why the queen is throwing a temper tantrum for a solution that was never truly guaranteed to work anyway.

 

But he already knows. She’s in tears when he comes out, her arms wrapped tight around her body. She’s put so much stock in that discovery, so much of her heart, and he tries hard not to be too harsh when he stands beside her.

 

“We’ll get there. You gotta quit acting like the whole world is owed this cause it’s not.”

 

“Why?”

 

“Why did all this happen or why isn’t the world owed anything?”

 

“Either. I don’t know. I just-“

 

“You aren’t going to solve every problem the moment you put your mind to it, baby girl.” His voice drops into a soft, quiet timbre and she shudders beside him, the tears she’d cried draining all her anger at herself for failing, or seemingly doing so. She hadn’t failed at all. She’d done all she could for the time being. And eventually, everything would work out just fine.

 

At least, on the scientific end of things it would. He had no idea how his heart would handle the outcome of whatever happened. He still didn’t want to think about that. For now, he could live in the moment.

 

“I’ve been trying to get my brain around that since we started. And it hasn’t worked.”

 

“Well, keep at it.” Tony shrugs as if it’s really that easy but he knows it’s not. There’s nothing easy about telling someone who can usually fix everything that they have to wait, that they must be patient, and that sometimes, they must fail in order to succeed. It’s a lesson he still struggles with learning, so he knows first hand how she feels.

 

“Do I have any other choice?” she asks, sounding as tired as he feels, and when he pulls her close to him and wraps an arm around her, she doesn’t pull away. If anyone were to glance to the two of them outside they’d see nothing but two friends-the older comforting the younger, a mentor doing his best to reassure his mentee. What they couldn’t see was the thrum of emotion that passed between them, the subtle shift in Shuri’s body as she soaked in every little bit of relief he could bare to give her. It wasn’t for anyone else to understand or grasp. It was a silent emotion, love on Tony’s part and simple need on Shuri’s. And they were the only ones who ever needed to know.

 

They’re quiet for a long while after, the sound of insects and birds the only noise between them, the city below as subdued and quiet as it had been since the snap. Once upon a time it’d been eerie but right now it’s almost the new normal, and he’s slowly come to grow used to the quiet. She pulls away from him slowly, her hand trailing behind him as she walks around to the clift of the mountain her lab rests on. When she glances behind to him he follows, the grass beneath his feet crunching melodically, and he waits for her to say something, to do something, for her to react. He realizes as she gathers herself that he’ll spend the rest of his life doing this. Waiting on her, waiting _for_ her.

 

“There’s talk of a coup,” she says then, and he knows now that this is what had worn on her so much all morning. She’s afraid, not just for herself, but for the delicate peace that’s held together only by a promise. And she has yet to make good on that promise.

 

“They’ve been saying they’re gonna kick you off that throne since I’ve known you. They haven’t yet.”

 

“No. Not yet. There haven’t been enough supporters for dissension. But there are now.” She hardens her face and glares toward the city. “I haven’t been working fast enough, haven’t been making good on what I’ve vowed.” She snorts out bitterly and shakes her head, her braids sweeping across her face. When she turns her face toward him there’s a determination there that makes him smile.

 

“I’m going to fix this.”

 

“You will.”

 

“And you’re going to help me.”

 

“You know it.”

 

She nods, as if she’s come to some sort of peace with what’s happening around her. “I think perhaps I can stall then. Maybe for a few weeks more. You’ll stay with me?”

 

He knows even if she hadn’t asked him he would. “As long as you need me.”

 

Shuri is quiet for another moment more and then, satisfied, heads back to her work and as he always does, he follows.

 

* * *

 

Stalling only works for so long.

 

She answers to her people, first and foremost, and they have to know where she is in terms of fixing this entire mess. So she opts for transparency. It makes it more difficult to find time alone with her, but there are little snatches here and there; a kiss in a store room, his hands on her thigh under the table during dinner. He’s taken to having his meals with Shuri and the Queen Mother more oft than not. Ramonda still eyes him like a nuisance and Okoye glares in his direction as if she has a clue to what is going on. And maybe she does; he knows her loyalty lies with the queen and with Wakanda and that it’s not in her job description to question with Shuri does at night. But he knows she’s gotta have questions.

 

If the general follows him a little closer, when he takes his leave and heads to his room, he doesn’t say a word about it. It’s better if he pretends like he doesn’t get nervous that she watches him like a hawk, that every little touch or motion toward Shuri goes cataloged. It drives him nearly batty, and even more so when Steve Rogers shows back up from wherever he’s been gallivanting around to. He avoids Steve like the plague, settles for falling back almost entirely because he can’t handle two incredibly perceptive people watching his every move.

 

Shuri, for what it’s worth, is too busy to truly care.

 

She’s got treatises to go over and formulas to finish developing so if he’s in her room at odd hours of the night, that’s their excuse. And it’s not really an excuse, not by the time she turns 21 years old. On the evening before her birthday, she huddles in bed with holos hovering around her head, her eyes searching her notes, little bits and pieces of theorems scattered across her wall like a scrapbook. He leans against her bedpost and watches her work, tired from being up for nearly 18 hours and hungry and the weight of the butt plug in his pocket reminds him that it’s been days since she’s done more than crawl atop him and fall asleep, exhausted but buoyed by the fact that they’re inching closer toward something.

 

“Are you going to stare at me the rest of the night or are you going to catch a nap while you can?” she asks him, never once missing a beat in calculations. “You’ve got to be running on empty now.”

 

Tony feels the corner of his mouth quirk up in amusement. “I didn’t know you worried about my old ass so much. Shit, if I didn’t know any better, I’d think you actually liked me.”

 

Shuri rolls her eyes but her own mouth starts a slow smirk and she gives what he thinks might be a laugh if she wasn’t tired herself. “Don’t get any ideas. I barely tolerate you most days.” But she smiles after she says it so he knows she doesn’t really mean it. He hopes she doesn’t, anyway, in a desperate, almost pathetic kind of way.

 

“Nah, you love me. Go ahead and admit it, baby cakes, I won’t tell a soul.”

 

Her giggle is worth the shove she gives him when he slides beside her on the bed. “Bast, stop calling me that.”

 

“Oh I’m _so_ sorry, your Majesty. _Pretty baby_...”

 

She breathes in deeply and closes her eyes for just a moment, the smile still lingering on her face.

 

“I have no idea why I like that so much.”

 

“Most girls like being called pretty. Hell, _I_  like being called pretty.”

 

She raises a brow and double taps to clear the vicinity of her holos. Apparently, she’s done for the night. “I would imagine so if you don’t hear it very often.”

 

_“Ouch.”_

 

“You’ll live. But I’m more than a pretty face, Anthony,” she says, and he bites his lip at the sound of his full name rolling off her tongue.

 

“Oh, I know it.” He tugs her close and feels his body heat up when she slides over into his lap and wraps an arm around his shoulder. “You’ve got a brain unlike anything I’ve ever seen and mouth that would get anyone else in trouble.”

 

“And I’ve got claws,” she says, kissing his jawline, her nails digging into his back. Her breath is hot against his skin and he can feel his libido ramp up to 100. “It’s why you call me Kitten.” When she chuckles, his mind goes blank for a second and all she has to do is wiggle her ass against him to get him raring and ready to go. And to think, he thought he’d slow down once he hit fifty.

 

“I call you Kitten cause I like the way it sounds,” he tells her, but she’s got the right of it. He kisses her neck and she whimpers out his name as his teeth come out to nibble.

 

“And I call you Daddy,” she breathes, making his hands clench into her thigh as it slides up the length of it, “because it drives you crazy.”

 

“Yeah…it does,” he agrees, pressing her down to the mattress and covering her chest in kisses and bites. She’ll have a hickey or ten by the morning, the perfect way to start her birthday, he thinks. And then he remembers what’s in his pocket and he pulls back, though she whines at the loss of his beard scruff on her skin.

 

“I thought you wanted-“

 

“I do. Not tonight.”

 

The look on her face is equal parts disbelieving and annoyed, probably because she’s got evidence otherwise in his pants right now. But this isn’t going to work tomorrow the way he wants it to if he doesn’t do things a certain way tonight. So he wills his body to calm down and motions for her to sit up.

 

And then he pulls the plug from his pocket and she stares at it with raised brows and a very slack jaw.

 

“Is that what I think it is?”

 

“Yep.”

 

“Do you expect me to wear that?”

 

“All day. Starting now, if you’re down for it.” That’s a challenge and she’s never one to pass a challenge up. So she pushes out her chest and narrows her eyes and opens her hands to take it from him, but he keeps it in hand.

 

“Nuh uh,” he says with a devious grin. “I’m putting it in. Bend over.”

 

Up until this point, he’s only ever managed to get two fingers inside her comfortably, and mostly when she’s all good and relaxed from multiple orgasms. There’s lube in her nightstand, he knows, and he’s got a plan to massage every little kink out of her body until she’s too sleepy to instinctively fight back against the penetration. But the look that crosses her face makes him think twice about just a massage.

 

For what it’s worth, the plug isn’t very big at all, only marginally larger than his two fingers and rounded so it’ll stay put unless either of them pull it free. But he’s also reminded of a younger version of himself and that time he’d tried taking a full sized dildo without any real warm up, so he sympathizes. He strokes the skin of her calves tenderly and tuts. “I’m not gonna just shove it up there, if that’s what you’re wondering.”

 

“I was. Good to know.” It’s so sarcastic he wants to be irritated but he can’t because she reaches out once more to grab the plug and when he sets it in her hand she inspects it like it’s a new part to her computer systems. “I’m supposed to wear this all day? How is that going to work?”

 

“It’ll work. Trust me.”

 

“Something tells me you’ve done something like this before.”

 

When he shrugs a maybe she snorts and shakes her head. “Bast, you’re a freak.”

 

“I didn’t get as far as I have in life by being anything less, Kitten. Now, you wanna play nice and let me put that in your pretty little ass or do you wanna tap out?” When she hesitates, he presses a hand to her hers and meets her eyes. “You can say no, Shuri. I’m not gonna be mad.”

 

“I don’t care if you’re mad or not,” she insists, but something tells him she would care. Even so, she seems relieved she can back out if she wants. And so he moves to take the plug back and figures maybe they could try that again for another time, maybe when she’s in a particularly kinky mood and not when she’s so stressed out about trying to rule this whole country at only 21 years old. He’s surprised then that she actually shakes her head and keeps ahold of it. At least, she does long enough so she can stare at it for a few moments longer.

 

“Will this feel like what your fingers do?” she asks and he opens his mouth to say no, because it won’t entirely, but then he nods because he knows exactly what she’s talking about.

 

“That’s sort of the point of wearing it.”

 

“So if I slip into the bathroom sometime during the day tomorrow and get myself off…it’ll..you know?”

 

He wants to laugh because she still can’t seem to make herself say certain things, even while they’re talking dirty. He wants her to let go and just say what she wants, but he won’t push her. “Pretty sure it will.”

 

“And this is your present to me?”

 

“Part of it.”

 

“Okay.” She turns around then, setting the plug on the bed close to his hand and she shimmies out her pants and her little underwear and bends over so that he has a full, unobstructed view of her perfect, pretty ass. Goddamn, he loves that view.

 

Licking his lips he slides his hands up her trembling thighs and then leans in to press kisses to her flesh, letting his mouth trail up to her left cheek before daring to give her the lightest of bites. She gasps and mewls a little in her throat, sinking back some when the bite turns into a kiss and he works a path around her bare bottom, around back down until he’s near the entrance. And then he realizes he’s never actually done this to her before, so he pulls back enough so he can ask if it’s okay.

 

“I don’t see why you're asking me this…I guess so?”

 

"Yes or no?"

 

"Tony-"

 

“Nuh uh, Kitten, you know what I said about consent.”

 

She sighs, deep and a little annoyed but he knows she appreciates that he asks her if this is what she wants so many times. “Yes. It’s fine. If I don’t like it, trust me. I’ll tell you.”

 

And she does. The second his tongue hits her hole she squeals and wiggles away from him and he can’t help but laugh at the reaction. “Weird or…what?”

 

“Nope. I don’t need a tongue in my asshole,” she says with a huff. “Move a little further down, if you just need me in your mouth.”

 

“Yes, your Majesty,” he quips, pulling her hips back once more and aiming for her pussy instead. He’s pleased to find it swollen and soaking and that she’s as sweet as ever. He can feel her abdomen clench under his hand when he presses his palm there, can hear her soft pants and little clipped moans as she rocks back and forth on his willing tongue. One of his favorite things in the world is for her to ride his face like she owns it, and he grins at the idea that she does, in her own way, own it. She owns his body, at least for right now and a big chunk of his heart, and if she wanted, she could have her way with his finances too, though she definitely doesn’t need them.

 

When her fingers come down to grasp at his hair and she spreads her thighs wider, he picks up the pace, slips a curved middle finger inside her and strokes her spot in time with the licks he gives her clit. That makes her keen, high pitched and whiny, and for a second, he nearly pulls back to shush her in case someone’s listening at the door. But she practically smothers him with her ass and pushes her hips down so he doesn’t have a chance to get a word in edgewise. He’s got work to do and it doesn’t involve any talking. Shuri leans back and watches him as her hips rock back and forth, over and over. He keeps a firm hold on her waist, adds another finger in the soaking wetness of her and stretches her open as he strokes her with his tongue. And that’s what eventually hits the spot, what gets her to rambling to him in half drunk Xhosa and broken English.

 

A filthy part of him wishes he could record this and watch it on repeat, over and over. He could get off just to the sound of her moaning out his name like she does. And when she cums, she bows her head, eyes closed as the pleasure takes her, pulling her hips up so his mouth detaches but his fingers still curl and thrust and stroke her all the way through it.

 

Shuri slides off of him and onto the bed, boneless and weak just the way he’d wanted. He licks his lips and sucks the remnants of her from his mouth, content to let the scent of her linger in his beard because it turns him on. He knows all he’d have to do is get a good inhale of her and take his dick out when he’s done with her tonight and he’ll have a mess all over his belly and chest in seconds flat. And maybe he could pull her over to him, kiss her till she’s raring and ready to go once again and slip deep inside her, probably from behind like she loves for him to do. But this isn’t about him right now. So he ignores the throbbing in his pants and gets up, grabs her lube from the nightstand and slicks the plug down until there’s no way in the world he won’t get this in.

 

“Alright Kitten. Daddy’s gonna give you a little toy you can play with all day tomorrow.”

 

She hums lazily and arches her back just enough so that her ass is back on display and he takes more of the lube, slicks her up good too. He kisses down her spine and smooths his free hand across her belly, to keep her relaxed and calm. “Easy does it,” he coos to her, as he pushes forward, slow and steady and she sucks in a sharp breath as the plug starts to clear her entrance. “Breathe in deep. Thata girl. Slow breaths, Shuri. In and out. I’m not gonna hurt you.”

 

The tension in her body seeps away a little at a time and he continues on until finally, the plug is as far as it’ll go. It’s pure silver and there’s a little clip on the very end of it. But he won’t worry about that little bit till tomorrow. For right now, he just wants her to get used to this.

 

“How’s it feel?” he asks, keeping up the massage of her tummy because it seems to keep her soothed.

 

“Full,” she sighs, letting her hips drop and she groans a bit at the change in angle. “So fucking full. Fuck.”

 

“Do you like it?”

 

“Uh huh.”

 

“Tell me with your words,” he says softly, a kiss to her neck and another to her temple because she’d taken it so well. “Tell Daddy how it feels.”

 

“It feels good,” she says, blinking her eyes in the lamp light, her pupils dilated with want and need. She wiggles her bottom a few times and her breath catches as she does so while her fingers travel down to her still swollen clit, stroking once, twice. He holds her hand still and shoots her a stern look.

 

“Nuh uh. Not tonight.”

 

“But Daddy I-“

 

“I said no.” He’s got so much more planned for tomorrow; he doesn’t want to spoil it by giving her the best of what’s yet to come right now. Besides, the need will drive her crazy and that’s where he wants her by the next evening; out of her mind with how badly she aches for him, ready to claw at the walls and tear down the palace in order to get to him. He grins at the thought.

 

Usually she’d fight him on it and rile him up and they’d fuck and claw and scratch at each other but she nods and breathes out, in and out over and over, until she’s so lax and lethargic that he’s almost sure she’s sleep. She wiggles her ass one more time and rolls over, humming as she does and stretches out much like a cat. “I need a nap,” she says decidedly. “You’ll stay with me?”

 

He thinks about the consequences of possibly being discovered in her bed in the morning versus the very alluring prospect of being able to give her a proper wakeup call and even a little head for breakfast. It’s a battle of want versus need; he wants to fuck her senseless when she wakes up, the plug still inside her, make her feel full to the brim and stretched to the limits of pleasure but he needs to go before either Okoye or Steve find him where he is.

 

“If you want me to. It’s your birthday, you know. You get to call the shots.”

 

“It’s not tomorrow yet,” she says with a sleepy grin, but she moves just enough to pull her shirt clear over her head and take off her bra, and she curls around her pillow naked and warm beside him. “But I’ll be sure to remember that,” she finishes, just before she settles into the comforters and blankets and drifts off.

 

He stares at her for a long moment, kisses the dip of her waist, and pulls the blankets around her. And just because he can’t help himself, he strips down to nothing and crawls back into bed beside her, turning out the light and wrapping her sleeping body into his arms.

 

* * *

 

He wakes up to a pounding on her door and for a second he panics because he’s convinced that it’s Steve Rogers coming to knock the shit out of him for fucking his dead best friend’s sorta girlfriend. But Shuri doesn’t seem too perturbed so he tries hard to settle back in the sheets and act as though he’s not bothered. She knows he is, if that smirk on her face is anything.

 

Of course, the smirk on her face turns into something like a gasp when she slides out of the sheets in search of her robe. The plug is still right where he’d put it last night and she seemed to have forgotten, at least until she had to move. He covers his grin with his arm and watches as she waddles about and finds the silken kimono that drags the floor.

 

It’s a Dora coming to invite her to breakfast with her mother, more than likely for her birthday. So he doesn’t worry about inviting himself along. This is something just for the two of them. And anyway, it’ll give him a moment respite from the temptation of having his way with her. He’s a little upset about no breakfast head, but not too much. He’ll have plenty of time for that later.

 

She’s up and out the door before he’s even got his pants on and she leaves him with a wink and a glance, her lips turned up as she wiggles her hips a bit. It’s what he’s thinking of when he walks into the lab and grabs a coffee from the machine they’ve got set up. It’s all that’s on his mind as he sorts through the schematics and formulations with Bruce and Jane. She’s telling them some story about Brunnhilde and Bruce is eating up every word, not once raising his eyes to glance over at Tony, who’s just about done redesigning the launch pad so it’ll send someone back more efficiently. He adds a few notes here and there and nibbles on the pastry he’d been working on since earlier, but doesn’t pay much attention to anything until the queen comes to her sanctuary, flanked by her trusty Dora Milaje and Steve Rogers at her side.

 

Theoretically, it should quell his hunger for her but it makes it worse. He has no idea why he’s so fucking horny while Captain America stands in Shuri’s laboratory making conversation. And he looks so goddamn handsome and wholesome, too, Mr. Beacon of Justice, decked out in dark navy and black. He’s still got the beard. Tony hates how much he loves the beard, hates that he wants to climb the tall son of a bitch like a tree.

 

What he hates the most is the brief flash of fantasy of the both of them sharing Shuri like the last slice of pizza. He can almost hear her moans, can almost taste the sweat off Steve’s skin. And he mentally shakes his head at the thought the second that his hazel eyes meet blue ones.

 

“Tony.”

 

He gives a quick quirk of a smile, his trademark, puts the mask on so that Rogers can’t see. He probably already does. He thinks of that breakfast in the courtyard and the thinly veiled threat-no, the promise-of some sort of divine retribution should Tony even try anything. And the wild, reckless boy that still lives inside him wants to rub it in his face that he’s been inside Shuri enough times now to own a title on her sweet little cunt.

 

Of course, he keeps his mouth shut and when he finally does speak, his words short.

 

“Cap. Find anything fruitful?”

 

Steve’s face shifts from his usual amiable know it all shell to something a little more raw, a little realistic. “Nat hadn’t made contact in weeks. I’m getting worried. Usually she’d at least keep in touch but-” Steve shakes his head. If Tony didn’t know any better, he’d think there was something going on between the captain and the spy. He's made it a habit of not knowing any better lately. He wonders if Bruce had any insight, considering what had gone on with the two of them in the past. But he pushes that thought aside simply because he did, in fact, care enough about Natasha to wonder if she was okay. And he mostly liked Clint, too. He had a sinking feeling about the whole situation, but he didn’t want to vocalize it aloud. He’d cross his fingers and hope for the best instead.

 

“Hey, she’s a super spy. She’ll be fine. I promise.” He tries his hand at appearing concerned and it works, because the stick seems to disappear from Steve’s ass. He relaxes enough to offer Shuri another smile, one that’s a bit too familiar for his liking, before he excuses himself from the lab.

 

“We’ll still have dinner, right? I still need to give you my birthday present.”

 

Tony’s presses his mouth shut so tight he thinks his jaw might snap, but he keeps his thoughts to himself. He can’t seem to quite keep his face neutral, unfortunately, because the look Steve gives him makes his skin prickle.

 

“Of course, Steve,” Shuri says softly, her smile genuine and lovely and it twists something nasty inside Tony that he doesn’t like. Why is he jealous anyway? She wasn’t his by any meaning of the word and he had no room to be angry she entertained other men. For all Tony knew, she was fucking Steve Rogers too. And maybe that’s what he was really jealous of. She got to get a taste of something he wasn’t even sure if he actually wanted.

 

It’d been a long time since he’d hate fucked anyone but goddamn, he was in the mood for it now.

 

“I better get back to business. I’ll leave you geniuses to your work.” He raises a hand to Bruce, who waves like a child, and then to Jane who smiles and nods, before his eyes settle one last time on Tony.

 

“I’ll let you know if Nat gets in touch,” he says, though there’s some sort of hidden meaning behind the phrase. He doesn’t know what it is. He just knows he doesn’t like it.

 

And the air between he and Shuri is thick with tension, especially when she saunters down the steps and pulls up a chair between Jane and Bruce. They wish her happy birthday, subdued as it may be, and Bruce offers to sing to her but she sweetly declines. And for the better part of an hour, she blatantly ignores him.

 

He tries not to let it wear on his nerves, focuses his attention mostly on what he’s doing, but then he has to actually speak to her and the way she turns to him, frankly, pisses him off.

 

“What do you need?”

 

He blinks dumbly at the tone of her voice, draws his hand back from where he’d unconciously reached for her.

 

“Uh, yeah. So about the launchpad. I figured out that in order to safely and effectively launch something bigger than a pair of shades...say, I don’t know, a mannequin-”

 

“Oh, that reminds me, I’ve got to remember to pick that up on my next stop home. You’ll remind me, won’t you Tony?” Bruce interrupts as he sips his coffee and Tony nods absentmindedly.

 

“Yeah, if I don’t forget. But anyway, we need to increase the axis of the-”

 

“I already know.” Shuri cuts him off, politely, and nods her head, then turns to Jane once more and continues whatever conversation she’d been carrying on earlier. Bruce notices and does nothing but shrug. His guess is as good as Tony’s apparently.

 

But Tony knows what she’s doing and he doesn’t fucking like it. And then he realizes it’s all his fault because he’d told her the night before she could have her way with him all day. It’s her birthday, after all. She gets to boss him around all she wants.

 

She’ll pay for it, that’s for sure.

 

He sucks it up and lets it slide, lets the little comments and her demands slide off him like water from a duck’s back. Every so often, his temper threatens to flair but he only has to remind himself of what he has planned for their night alone. It’s only that she’s so damned good at pushing every single button he has, especially the big red ones marked “do not smash”, and all she has to do is giggle at the mention of Steve Rogers for something inside him to snap.

 

It’s a quiet thing. It’s not even noticeable unless someone were staring at him, but as of that moment, no one is paying him an iota of attention. And he’s thankful they aren’t, because then no one will notice what he says until he says it.

 

“Hey, Kitten. Pick a number.”

 

The lull of voices halts as all three sets of ears seem to finally remember he’s there and try to pick up on what he’s saying. Of course, nobody catches the pet name, nobody but for whom it’s intended, who inhales sharply and glances to her two fellow scientists as if she’d been caught with her hands in a cookie jar.

 

“Who are you talking to, Tony, I didn’t catch it.”

 

He wants so very badly to push his luck, to call her pretty baby, to really make her panic, but he settles for simply saying her name this time.

 

“Shuri. I mean, if the three of you weren’t jacking your jaws so hard, you could have heard me.”

 

Jane rolls her eyes and snorts out a laugh, then picks up a tea and turns back to the computer. Bruce shakes his head, sighs, and slides his computer chair over to Jane, but his eyes linger for just a second too long. Maybe he’d heard the 'kitten' after all.

 

Either way, Tony had Shuri’s full, undivided attention.

 

“What did you need, Anthony?” she asks him, in a voice cool as silk, but it’s hiding an anxiety coupled with the pressure of having the plug still in place. At least, he thinks it’s still there. It better be. She’d be in trouble if it weren’t.

 

“I said, pick a number.”

 

“Why?”

 

It’s a challenge and he’s itching to take her up on it. _Itching._ “Cause I said so.”

 

Her brow raises near to her hairline but when he matches her glare and doesn’t budge, a look in his eye that spells pure hell, she relents. Begrudgingly, but it’s still relenting and that’s all that matters. Tony won’t win her game but it doesn’t hurt to put a few kinks in her strategy.

 

“Fine.” She draws in a breath as she rolls her eyes and waves her hand about dismissively. “11.”

 

He almost grins but bites it back at the last instance.

 

“Are you sure about that?”

 

For a moment, she seems to really consider how he says that, but she waves it off, much like she does most everything else he says or does.

 

“I said what I said. 11. Whatever do you even need a number for?”

 

He does grin then, just a hint of the predator that lurks inside him shining through and he thinks maybe, just maybe, she’s a little antsy right now. She’ll be clawing at the gates later, if he has his way. “Playing a game. Don’t worry about it.”

 

It sounds oddly suspicious to anyone paying attention but no one is. Not really, not until she scoffs dramatically and turns back to Jane and Bruce. “Whatever you say, Daddy,” she says airily and Tony’s entire body goes from hot to cold and back in the span of a second. And of course, the others had heard that if they hadn’t heard anything else, because Jane’s face turns red and Bruce looks as though he’s seen Christ.

 

“Uh, your Majesty…” he starts, nudging the queen.

 

“What?” Her eyes go round and unassuming, the unknowing innocent. But she’s not fooling Tony. He tries so very hard to keep his skin from flushing red, but he knows at the very least the tips of his ears are crimson as beets. At least his hair is shaggy and covers the worst of it. At least no one can hear his thoughts or feel his heart beating a million miles a minute.

 

She’s going to fucking kill him and she hasn’t even _touched_ him.

 

Jane bursts into laughter and tries, through her gulps of air, to explain that calling Tony ‘Daddy’ probably wasn’t the best idea. And Shuri, the brilliant actress she is, explains she’d tried to be sarcastic. “You know, when someone’s trying to tell you what to do so you call them your father.”

 

“You just say Dad, usually," Bruce adds, rubbing his face. “God, 'Daddy' sounds so...whose idea was it to completely screw that word over? You can’t even talk about your own father without it sounding sexualized, you know? There’s gonna be a whole generation of kids not calling their dads ‘Daddy’ because of porn and shit like that.”

 

“I don’t think porn has anything to do with it,” Jane argues, and just like that, she and Bruce are in a debate on the etymology of ‘daddy’, of the inflections behind it that take it from innocent to not so. And all the while, Shuri watches him with the smug satisfaction of someone who knew exactly what kind of reaction they’d get and relished in the fact that they got it.

 

He lets her have her reaction, lets her see the tick in his jaw and the way he sweats and fidgets in his seat. But he’s got her number now and a plan to completely undo her in ways that she’d probably never imagined. He suppresses his smile and drops his gaze, goes back to what he was working on and makes it a show of avoiding her for at least another hour.

 

It’s when they pause for lunch does he start, and by this point, she’s probably thinking she’s got one over on him. Jane volunteers to run out to grab the food and Bruce heads to an upper level to watch the news so it’s just the two of them on this floor, mostly alone. Of course, all Bruce would have to do is poke his head over the railing and glance down to see whatever they were doing. And there’s the slightest, off chance that he could, that Jane might come back early, or that anyone else could arrive to the lab and find them in any number of compromising positions.

 

So he has to act fast.

 

He still sits parallel to her at the table as she leans back, her long legs moving side to side idly underneath her little pleated skirt. It reminds him a lot of a school uniform and he knows she wore it to drive him crazy. Of course, it’d worked. He waits a few minutes in the silence, nothing but the slight hum of the computers and her soft breaths, to roll his chair over to where she sits. She lifts her eyes to him and graces him with a sweet, unassuming smile.

 

“You haven’t wished me happy birthday,” she says, her voice low and suggestive. He shrugs and trails a finger up her shin to her knee, a smirk coming to his mouth when her breathing stutters ever so slightly.

 

“You haven’t given me a chance to, Kitten,” he says, so that only she could hear. He knows how deep his voice can get when he wants it to. He knows how much she loves it when it does. He lets it drop a little lower, and his fingers continue up her knee toward her thigh. And when her eyes dart up to where Bruce stands in front of the television, he thumps the flesh of her thigh hard so that her eyes shoot to his and she focuses on him only.

 

“What are you looking up there for?”

 

“If he sees you touching me like this-“

 

“Yeah?”

 

“Do you know what kind of trouble the both of us would be in?”

 

He does. He’s had nightmares about being found out and by Bruce specifically and he honestly doesn’t want to ever see that kind of disappointment in his friend’s eyes, but the idea of having his way with Shuri right under everyone’s noses turns him on so much he can’t stop. And besides, her skin is so fucking soft, so sweet. He wants to get on his knees right now and suck some of it into his mouth and then start a race to see how fast he can make her cum just from eating her out.

 

But that’s not part of the plan right now. That’ll wait for later. He ignores her question, and scoots the chair over till he’s right beside her, and keeps touching her until his hand disappears underneath that little skirt and his fingers brush her underwear.

 

“Are you still wearing your present?”

 

Her mouth opens slightly, the softest of moans coming out when he pushes his fingers into her heat and strokes her through the thin cotton.

 

“Yeah,” she breathes out, her thighs parting just a little. “You told me not to take it out, didn’t you?”

 

“I did. And I’m so proud of you for being good for me, pretty baby.” He pulls back just enough to lift his hand and then slip his fingers into her underwear, and Shuri pulls her hips up a bit so that he’s got more access. She’s delightfully slick and so hot. But he wants to work her up a little more before he starts for real. He keeps his strokes slow and light and watches as little by little she silently begs him for more.

 

There’s a noise up above and Tony sees her freeze, her heels pushing into the floor so she can move back and away from him if need be. He shakes his head and gives her a wordless command to keep still, and he glances up to see Bruce flopping down in one of the couches beside the entertainment center, a beer in hand and his phone pressed to his cheek. He’s probably calling Jane about what to grab him for lunch and Tony’s got the feeling he’ll look down and ask them for their orders in a second. But he doesn’t want to move his hand. Instead, he pushes her chair over and scoots his along until they’re both properly under the table and his hands are out of sight.

 

“Take your panties off.”

 

She lifts her hips and slides them down her hips and legs quickly, leaning down to pluck them from around her ankles. They dangle from her fingertip when she raises her hand and he motions for her to surrender them over so he can stuff them in his pocket for later. She won’t be needing them the rest of the day; he’s got plans that require that they're off and out of sight.

 

“What are you going to-“

 

“Shh. Do you wanna get caught?” He smacks the inside of her thigh just as Bruce moves from his chair and over to the railing. Tony pushes his hand up higher and into her cunt, the smoothness of her flesh making it easy to glide his fingers past her lips and down into her heat. She bites her bottom lip and keeps her eyes on the computer, her hands out in front of her, and Tony smirks to find that they tremble just a bit.

 

“You guys know what you want just yet?”

 

“Uh…hold on…Shuri?”

 

She blinks and turns to him, her skin flushed ever so slightly and her mouth opened just a bit. She sucks in a breath and looks from him to Bruce quickly, then back to Tony when he starts a series of circles on her clit. “I uh…hm. I would just like a…a meat pie if…”

 

“One for me too, Bruce. Two meat pies. No, no, make it three. I’m starving.”

 

Bruce nods and turns back to the tv and to the phone and Tony takes that moment to slip his fingers inside her, to curl them up as he grinds the heel of his palm against her clit in time with his movements. Shuri’s legs fall open wide and she leans back a little, her eyes never leaving the top floor, watching Bruce to make sure he doesn’t look down again. She’s struggling not to make any sort of noises, her hips pushing against his hand to get him to move faster.

 

“Fuck, baby, you’re so wet,” he purrs into her ear, leaning over so he can put more pressure on his strokes. She bites the inside of her cheek and closes her eyes, her head tipping back further so that her throat is exposed to him. He’s so tempted to take a bite and suck a big hickey into the side of her neck but he doesn’t have time. “Are you ready to cum for Daddy?”

 

She nods her head and gives him a half drunk “uh huh” as she grasps his hands and moves faster and harder. “Please,” she moans out, and it’s loud enough that he thinks Bruce may have heard. But the TV above is a little louder and he’s far enough away that he wouldn’t have paid it any attention. Even so, a thrill runs through him at the idea that they’re this close, that anyone could walk in now into the wide open space of the lab and find him finger fucking her under the table. A little part of him desperately wants someone to, no matter the consequences.

 

“Lean back,” he commands, and she does instantly, a whimper rising from her throat when the plug inside her pushes forward a little. “Feel that? Daddy’s gift and Daddy’s fingers making you feel so good…move with me, Kitten. Come on. You don’t have much time.”

 

She opens her eyes and keeps them focused on him as he pushes another finger inside her, then another, until she’s fucking most of his hand and the chair she sits on threatens to tip backward. She’s so close he can feel it and he pulls her in for a kiss to keep her quiet, her orgasm thrumming through her body just as his lips touch hers. She moans into his mouth and clenches around him, nearly gushing all over his fingers and the seat, the slickness of her spread out across her thighs when he finally pulls his hand away. He presses a kiss to her ear and warm breath tickles the shell of it, goosebumps popping up across her neck and throat, and he grins.

 

“One.”

 

“Huh?”

 

“You’ll find out later.” There’s no sign of Bruce above them, so Tony can only guess he’s back on his way down to this level. Perfect timing, too. There’s a damp spot on the seat when Shuri moves, but he’s sure it’ll dry. “Go get cleaned up,” he tells her, licking his fingers clean and leaning back in his chair as if nothing at all had happened. She stumbles back to the adjacent restroom on shaking legs and he pushes her seat under the table again, just as Bruce comes from down stairs with his half finished beer still in hand.

 

“Where’d Shuri go?” He glances around the lab and sees nothing and no one but Tony with his fingers in his mouth and his legs crossed in front of him casually. At least Tony hopes it’s casual. He’s on fire and so hard right now he could burst.

 

“Bathroom. Did Jane say how far away she is? I could eat a horse.”

 

* * *

 

He spends the rest of the day doing that. He sneaks her off toward the machine alone, under the guise of showing her detailed specs on the launch pad and pulls her skirt up, pleased to find that she hadn’t lied about the plug after all. And he takes her right there, hard and fast so that she barely has time to react before she cums like a rocket. There’s another moment when Jane steps out to take a call from Thor that he fingers her under the table once more, and another in a dark part of the lab, close to the windows overlooking the vibranium mines that he gets on his knees and sucks her into his mouth.

 

The more he makes her cum, the easier it is to do every time. And by the sixth time, she’s half out her mind like he wanted, her hands clumsy and her concentration waning with every minute that passes. All he wants is to take her back to her bedroom and finish her off a few more times, but he remembers she’s got birthday dinner with Steve Rogers that evening, so he’ll have to wait.

 

The waiting is torture and his mind conjures up all sorts of filthy things to do to her as payback for ditching him for Captain America. He’s got the image of her naked and tied up while he fucks her silly in the back of his mind when the car arrives at the palace. He keeps walking past her room and to his, no words spoken, as she goes to freshen up for her dinner. And he keeps his body rooted to his own bed, aching and needy and angry, when she leaves to find Steve.

 

It’s almost close to midnight before she comes back. He hears a soft tap at his door, one that he knows no one else would give but her.

 

“Door’s open.”

 

She peeks her head around the door and watches him for a very long, almost calculating second. It’s as if she’s trying to size him up and feel him out for how much danger she might very well be in. He’d never assume she was anything other than smart. But she’d been playing with fire all day and he was so tired of waiting.

 

“C’mere.”

 

Shuri clears the threshold and closes his door softly, locking it with a slow, sure sort of purpose. “Steve says hello.” She presses her hands against the door and tilts her head, waits for a reaction. He struggles to keep from lunging across the room and pushing her against the wall and just fucking her there. It’s definitely an option, but he wants to make her beg by the end of the night. “Guess what he got me for my birthday?” she continues, when he’s still silent. “It’s a comic book. A first edition, worth a lot of money. Apparently, it’s nearly as old as he is. Isn’t he sweet?”

 

Tony still says nothing, though it’s on the tip of his tongue to point out that anything Steve’s got, he’s got more of. He waits until she’s close enough that he reach out and touch her. He moves so fast she doesn’t have time to really react, the only noise from her a squeak when he yanks her skirt over and pulls her down into the bed on top of him. His hands slide up her legs to her bare ass and he almost groans when he realizes she’s still not wearing any panties and she’s still got the plug in.

 

 _Fuck_.

 

“I don’t give a fuck about Steve Rogers,” he growls, his nails digging into her flesh and he knows it hurts her but she seems to like the pain. “I don’t wanna hear anything about Captain Fucking America right now. Do you understand me?”

 

She bites her lip and spreads her legs so that she straddles him, and he can feel the warmth of her through the thin layer of his pajama pants. “Mmmhm.”

 

“Good. Take your clothes off.”

 

Shuri obeys him, albeit with that infuriating smirk she wears when she knows he’s irritable. He ignores it to pull out the remainder of her present. There’s a tail to clip onto the plug, a collar with a bell, and a headband for her to wear and a slim box that he sets aside for when they’re done. For right now, she’s got to look the part. If she’s his kitten, she’s going to look like it.

 

She’s naked when he turns around, except for the bracelets she wore and her sneakers. There’s a moment where he debates on telling her to go grab her heels and put those on, but he decides against it. He doesn’t want her out his sight, not for the time it’d take for her to dress again and grab those shoes. She’s fine barefoot. He likes her feet, her dainty little toes, the arches and heels. When she slips her shoes off and crawls forward in the bed toward him, he figures what she’s got on-or, what she doesn’t have on-is pretty perfect. And then he remembers the tail and collar and head band.

 

“So, you know that clip on the bottom of your plug?”

 

“I’ve been wondering what that’s…oh. Tony. You’re serious about this?” She laughs, takes the tail from him and smooths her fingers down the soft, downy fur of it. “You really want me to be your kitten, don’t you?”

 

He hums and places the kitten ears atop her head, kissing her brow when she meows playfully. She reaches behind her and clasps the collar on and laughs a little when the bell on it jingles. “Just as cute as I thought you’d be. Turn around, I’ll put the tail on for you.” She bends over, her spine perfectly arched, as he clips it into place and when he lets go, she wiggles her hips, her head turned over her shoulder, a grin on her face.

 

“Are you gonna tell me what the numbers were all about?”

 

“Have you figured it out?”

 

She blows out a breath and adjusts her headband, and Tony takes a second to take the entire look in. She looks absolutely delicious and he’s practically starving for her.

 

“Last time, in the lab, you said six.”

 

“Mmm yep. So…”

 

“Eleven orgasms.” She breathes it out as if it’s impossible but Tony knows he can stretch her to it if he tries. The little tastes he’s been giving her all day haven’t been nearly enough to truly sait her and he knows she wants more. He most definitely does. His dick is practically screaming to be taken care of.

 

“Think you can handle it, pretty baby? If not, I can always-“

 

“Can you even do that? I don’t want to wear you out.”

 

He snorts and undoes the tie of his pants, letting them fall to the floor carelessly. Her eyes travel to his dick the way it always does when he’s naked in front of her. And though he knows he’s older and has a lot more miles on him than anyone she’d probably ever imagined she’d be fucking, he takes a little pride in the fact that he’s still toned and lean and sexy in his own way.

 

He’s seasoned. And for whatever reason, she seems to like that.

 

Shuri licks her lips and crawls the remainder of the way on the bed, pauses just shy of touching him to bend over and wiggles her ass again. “Want me to take care of that?” she asks, reaching out a hand to stroke the length of him slowly, teasing. He thinks of a million reasons he should say no, but he’s waited so long for this, for just the chance to have a part of her wrapped tight around him that he can’t help but nod his consent. He steadies himself as she darts out her tongue and licks a long stripe from the base all the way to the head, then swirls that tongue around him so that he huffs out a deep breath.

 

All that talk about taking his time breaking her to pieces and he was already this close to doing so himself.

 

Concentrating on anything but what she was doing, he slides his hand down her shoulders and back, drags his nails along her spine and spreads his fingers against her skin, just as she opens her mouth and envelopes him whole. The heat of her mouth makes everything go blank for a second and he nearly stumbles forward but he clenches down and keeps his balance with only a little difficulty. It’s another one of those moments where he wishes he could record this, and against his better judgement, he gets the bright idea to hunt for his cellphone and snap a picture.

 

“Hold on…hold up, just a-“

 

“What?”

 

“I wanna take a picture.” She stares at him for a second and swallows, then narrows her eyes, annoyed that he’d broken her concentration just for that.

 

“You should have done that before I got started,” she grumbles, but she leans back and takes his phone off the charger, double tapping it a few times until she finds his camera.

 

“One picture.”

 

“No video?”

 

“Do I look stupid? Bast. No video.” She rubs her bottom lip between her teeth in thought as he readies shot and then changes her mind. “Unless it’s a Snapchat. Those don’t last forever.”

 

“Nothing lasts forever if you don’t want it to,” he counters, but he doesn’t want to push it any more. He feels a little shitty anyway about taking a pic, but he can’t resist revisiting the image of her blowing him with a cat tail and ears on. Kitten, indeed. So she gets back into position, her hand on his dick this time, her tongue out as she swirls it around and around the head of it. It’s a little difficult to take a decent picture when she’s giving him a blowjob, but he manages to take a few shots, several different angles just to see which is the best. And then he lets his mind wander for a while and doesn’t think about anything else but how good her mouth is.

 

She hadn’t been that good at this at first, but she’d learned. He doesn’t know if it’s simply her way of letting him know that anything he thinks he’s good at, she can be better at or not, but he isn’t going to complain. She seems to like having him in her mouth, though the position could seem a little demeaning. It’s anything but. She’s got all the control over him like this, just from flexing her jaws and sucking in tighter, or relaxing enough that she throats him in a way not too many people have managed to pull off. He’s not even really that big; he’s seen bigger, had bigger, sucked bigger himself. But he’s nothing to sneeze at either. And he knows what the hell he’s doing with that thing too.

 

He’s reminded of that old saying… something about the size of the boat and motion of the ocean. He can’t really remember exactly how it goes right now, though, because she’s gasping and gagging on his dick and she looks so pretty while she’s doing it.

 

Tony gets a handful of her long braids and tugs her head back a bit, just enough so that the very tip of him rests on her lips and he groans when she laughs, sticks her tongue out and moans.

 

“You know, if my jaw didn’t hurt, I could do that all day.”

 

“I wouldn’t stop you,” he says, trailing a thumb down the side of her face and over her lips. He’s still hard as a rock and itching to cum, but if she’s tired, he won’t make her finish him off like this. He’s got two perfectly working hands, though. “You’ve got such a pretty mouth.” He takes his dick in hand and spits in his palm, starts to stroke and watches her watching him, her eyes taking note of how he slides from top to bottom.

 

“I could have done that,” she says, almost pouting, but he can feel the inklings of an orgasm creeping up on him and he doesn’t want to argue about it. Instead, he placates her by leaning down for a kiss, his tongue brushing up against his at the same moment her hand reaches out to grasp him. He grunts into her mouth and then chuckles, kisses her again and again, over and over as she tries to match him. He decides to guide her instead, his larger palm clasped over her small hand and he starts over again, twisting and tugging in a fast, almost blurred pace.

 

“Mmm, yeah, like that pretty baby. You’re so good at this.”

 

“Yeah?” She sighs across his beard and kisses him slow, her eyes fluttering closed and her mouth open in a pant. It’s almost like she’s getting pleasure out of pleasing him. He doesn’t want to get used to the idea of that, but it’s an intoxicating feeling, so he lets it ride. “Will you let me do this again?”

 

“Goddamn…” He’s close enough that she needs to pull away or she’ll have a mess on her chest, but she doesn’t seem to want to pull back, even when he gently pushes her too. “Baby girl. Come on, I’m gonna-“

 

“Go ahead.” She pushes her chest out, slides her fingers across her dark nipples and tugs them as he jacks off hard and fast. It feels like his brain is tangled and his breath leaves his body and he yelps, eyes crossing as ropes of cum splash across her chin and throat and her collar bone. And she stands still with a dreamy smile on her face and takes it, humming pleasantly as she wipes a bit from the collar she wears and sucks it off her fingers.

 

That was a sight he wanted committed to memory. He picks up the forgotten phone with his free hand and snaps a quick picture of her just like that, stares at her as he strokes until he’s too sensitive to stand it and closes his eyes for a second to her burned in his brand, painted white and marked with him.

 

 _His_. She was his no matter what claimed, he thought possessively and he tosses her back to the bed with is mouth on hers again. She welcomes him with open arms and opened legs, wrapping her body around him tight and pulling him close. “Tony,” she breathes, her skin so hot he thinks she’s melting. He lets the name slide because all he cares about right now is getting inside her and making her cum.

 

“Tony, I want…mmm, please, I wanna…”

 

“Yeah, Kitten? You want Daddy that bad, huh?”

 

He nibbles at her neck and scoops up her hips so that she’s tilted at an angle, her shoulders still on the bed but her ass lifted in the air. The fur of the tail she wears tickles the tops of his thighs and her headband barely hangs onto her head, but he doesn’t care. He pulls her higher still until she’s right at his waiting mouth and he blows out warm air onto her aching little cunt.

 

She whines and tries to shift so that his face is in her pussy but he doesn’t budge. He wants her to wait for it if only for a few seconds more. “You’ve been teasing me all day!”

 

“And you’ve been a little bitch all day. So we’re even.”

 

“Tony-“

 

He cuts her off with a smack to her bare ass and she squeals, but the way her eyes dilate tells him she absolutely loves it. So he does it again, until her ass has to be stinging because his hand damn sure is. He laughs when tears spring to her eyes and she wiggles her hips again, her ankles wrapping around his shoulders so she can push him closer. She’s getting stronger or he’s wearing down because he does move, if only a little.

 

“I’m going to rip you to fucking pieces if you don’t fuck me right now.”

 

The growl in her voice does something absolutely filthy to his insides and he says to hell with more head in favor of dropping her hips down to his level and stroking his dick across her clit.

 

“Impatient. Spoiled. I swear to god I give you _everything_ and you still want more.”

 

“Fuck…” she huffs out, her eyes blinking back either tears of frustration or anger. He’s not entirely sure which. “Tony, just fuck me.”

 

“You’re not satisfied with anything I do. Nothing. No matter how many times I make you cum you still beg me for more.”

 

“I’m not…fuck you, I’m not begging, _I’m not_.”

 

Except that she is and he loves it, he loves this so much. He’s already hard again, his hands sweaty and shaking across her thighs and he pushes forward just a bit, nudges the head in just a little.

 

“You’re a fuckin’ brat, pretty baby. I oughta fuck it out of you. Huh? Want me to?”

 

He plunges forward hard then, and she cries out, her head thrown back into the mattress. Somehow, the headband still holds on, though the ears on it are crooked and it sits sideways on her head. But none of that really matters. He can feel the plug from where he’s seated inside her and it takes him a second to gather himself before he can even move. It’s a tight fit, but it feels so good, so right. And Shuri lies with her hands clenched in the sheets, eyes rolled back in her head, when he pulls back and thrusts forward once more.

 

Tony keeps hold of her thighs and moves, slow at first, though his strokes are deliberate and powerful. He wants her to feel every inch of him in every inch of her, to remember what it’s like to be thoroughly fucked like this for days and weeks after. He wants this memory etched in her mind when she’s alone at night, when he’s on the other side of the planet and all she has is the cool sheets and her fingers to keep her company. He mostly just wants to make his mark so no one else will ever do for her, but he knows that someday she’ll find someone else who’ll make her feel this good or even better.

 

But tonight is not someday and for right now, he’s what she’s got.

 

There aren’t any words, just the sound of them moving, grunts and groans and whimpers when he leans forward and takes a nipple into his mouth, the jingle of the bell on the collar. He keeps his eyes on her face, and wills her with his mind to look at him. He wants to see her eyes when she falls to pieces. But she keeps her eyes screwed shut and his name out her mouth, at least until he rearranges her legs over his shoulders and starts to circle her clit with his thumb. She gasps out his name and tosses her head, and he presses his free hand to her belly to keep his thrusts steady.

 

“Tell me how good it feels,” he whispers, hot and needy, and she fights him on it, refusing to budge.

 

“Fuck you.”

 

“Tell me,” he says, brokenly and ragged, his hand raised to smack her ass once more in case she doesn’t obey. His hips ratchet up their movement and the change of pace makes her sob. “Tell me how good it feels, Shuri. Tell me. _Fuck_. Tell me.”

 

He’s the one begging now, but he doesn’t care. He needs to hear that he means something, anything to her at that moment, if it’s only a birthday fuck in his rumpled sheets. He’ll take whatever scraps he can get from her, no matter how pitiful or pathetic. He’s past the point of shame or self worth. All he wants is Shuri and whatever little bit she’ll let him have of her.

 

She’s lost in her own world, doesn’t seem to even notice that she’s got such a hold of him right then. She moans and bows her head to his shoulder, digs her hands into his scalp and pulls hard. “So good,” she finally says, and he almost sobs at how much he needed to hear that. “You feel so good, so so good, Tony… _fuck me_ , I wanna cum. Fuck! I’m gonna…” She groans again, deep in her body and her legs curl around his shoulders until he’s so tangled with her that there’s no telling where either of them begin or end. She’s apart of the very core of him, the very essence. And he’s so fucked, so far gone.

 

When she cums, it’s with her fingernails in his shoulders and her teeth barred and she’s the beautiful thing he’s seen. He staves off his orgasm to push her to another, switches positions so that she’s riding him backwards and he gets a good view of the little tail that moves every time she lifts her hips up and down. He watches the ripples of her back muscles flex as she works toward yet another orgasm and then she does cum again, this time with her eyes opened and lifted to the sky, her body so tense it could snap. Her braids spill out back over her sweat soaked skin, the kitten ears tilted back and her mouth opened in pleasure, throat bobbing under the collar, and she looks like every wet dream he’s ever had. He sits up enough to wrap his arms around her waist and plow forward through her eight orgasm until he’s cumming too, enough that his brain shorts and his heart stops and he swears he’ll die like this, but fuck, he wants to.

 

Nine.

 

Ten.

 

He gives her eleven at nearly four a.m. in the quiet of the very early morning. His sheets are a ruined, soaked mess, his chest full of scratches and bites and hickeys. He aches in places he’d forgotten he could ache in and he’s so damned tired he knows he’ll sleep well past noon. Cat ears and the collar lay forgotten somewhere on the other side of the room, probably on the floor. The plug sits on his night stand, still filthy and he grimaces at the thought of cleaning that and her and himself. But right now, he doesn’t care that they’re sticky and sweaty and filthy. He only cares that she’s curled up against his body, that she’s humming something soft and sweet with her eyes closed, that her lips are bitten raw from him, that the marks on her skin came from him.

 

He wonders smugly if Steve Rogers could have ever pulled that off. Bucky Barnes sure as hell couldn’t have. He hates the nasty twist of jealousy he gets thinking about him. It’s so stupid. She’s in his arms right now. And who the hell is jealous of a dead man?

 

“Stop thinking so hard,” she whispers in the darkness. He can’t see much of anything in this light, just a glimmer of the fading moon and some of the stars and in that illumination, a flash of her sweet, dark skin.

 

“How do you do that?”

 

“Read your mind? I’m a genius. I can do anything.”

 

There’s humor in her voice, a lazy sort of satisfaction that only comes from having had 11 orgasms over the course of the day. Tony sighs and leans over to kiss her again, because though he can barely move, her kisses are easy and so sweet and they breathe life into him in a way nothing else could. He slides his hand down her neck, comes across to press against her throat teasingly and she makes a soft sound of approval.

 

“You should do that more often. I like it.”

 

“If you want me to, pretty baby.”

 

He remembers then about the last little part of her present and with lead limbs and a dizzy head he rolls over and nearly off the bed so that he has to crawl over to the nightstand and find the slim box that holds it.

 

“Come back,” she implores him, and he grabs a bit of the blankets, pulls them around them at the foot of the bed. “Where’d you go?”

 

“Got the rest of your present here.” He hands her the box and she opens it slowly with fumbling hands, squinting in the dark. He almost hates to turn the light on but he wants her to see what he’d gotten her as badly as a child trying to impress a parent. So he rolls over again and clicks on the lamp and in the golden glimmer, she blinks, then gives a soft gasp as she pulls out the necklace.

 

It’s simple, really, nothing that exciting, except the metal flows through her fingers like water when she picks up the chain and the jewel pendent on the very end is a rich crimson red.

 

“A ruby?”

 

Tony shakes his head and helps her to unclasp it. “It’s a diamond,” he tells her. “Probably one of the rarest ones that exist.” He doesn’t really need to add that little anecdote because knowing Shuri, there’s red diamonds in the crown jewels somewhere and this is costume jewelry in comparison. But he’d hunted down the gem for weeks, spent more money than he can remember on just that little necklace of nano metal and diamonds so she’d smile the way she was now.

 

He doesn’t know if it’s a smile of courtesy or something genuine, at least not until she breathes in and kisses him deep, a bubble of tears in her throat when she pulls away.

 

“it’s so beautiful,” she murmurs, and she sits up a little, implores him to put it on her. “Thank you.”

 

Tony has no words to tell her that anything in the world she’d want is hers if he could give it to her. There’s no use. She’s the girl who has everything. And most of all, she has him. A little shard of guilt pierces through the haze of satisfactions that crowds all common sense in his mind, but he gets used to the feeling, numbs it down and away until he feels nothing but Shuri’s breath on his throat. He presses kisses to her shoulders until the sun starts to rise and their eyes droop closed.

* * *

  

The mind is a powerful thing.

 

He’s somehow convinced himself that she’s falling for him too and now he’s got another dilemma going. He isn’t sure how much time he can reasonably spend in Wakanda before anyone back home gets suspicious. Pepper seems to understand that his time is no longer his, but the truth is, it could be. If he wanted to go home, all he’d have to do is ask and Bruce would pick up the slack. But he can’t stop falling into bed with Shuri long enough to realize how sloppy he’s getting. He can’t find it in him to really care, at least not for right now.

 

Weeks go by without any significant developments, at least on the time travel. They manage to increase the increments until they’re going back a full day, but there’s always perils with anything like that. The first set of shades they send back a full 24 hours come raring back to the present in three pieces and no one can quite understand what the issue is. It takes them days and nights of brain wracking work to realize that the machine itself isn’t built to sustain time travel for that long. And Tony puts the blame all on himself. He’d done the adjustments, had done most of the actual building.

 

But Shuri still takes it to heart.

 

Every little failure pushes her further and further into a constant state of anxiety and panic until she spends entire days locked in the lab, searching for answers, trying hard to make sure all of this is fixed. The people are getting antsy, the tribes have been meeting again. And through all of this, Tony keeps running back home to his wife, for doctor visits the closer she gets to her due date and the birth of his son. He wishes he could be two people at once. It’s almost overwhelming to live a double life, even though Shuri knows where he’s needed most.

 

“But I need you too,” she says in the dark of her bedroom, when she’s tired of crying and the wine is empty. She lays in his arms and rants about the futility of everything, grieves all over for everything she’s lost. And he loves her just a little bit more each day, though he knows there’s no way he’ll ever be able to do anything about it.

 

“I’m here.”

 

“Not for always.”

 

It’s said with the attitude of someone who knows they shouldn't care but does anyway. It breaks his heart. He thinks that maybe it breaks hers too, but she’s so much tougher than he’ll ever be. He doesn’t make promises he can’t keep. He only stays when he can, loves her best he knows how. And he doesn’t get angry when she refuses to talk to him when he leaves for New York, the day before his anniversary.

 

“I’ve got to go. She’s expecting me. You can’t really think I’m going to miss my anniversary when I-“

 

“Just go, okay?”

 

She shrugs as if it means nothing at all, but the hurt in her eyes speaks volumes. Even so, he packs his things and heads home, thought his heart is heavy and his mind in a million different places at once.

 

He shrugs off the weight of the world and the guilt that wants to consume him once again when he steps foot back through his door, his very pregnant wife waiting on him with a smile on her face. He ignores everything and he pretends, because that’s all he really can do for right now.

 

She doesn’t call him the entire week he’s gone. He doesn’t expect her to, but it stings all the same.

 

He pushes the feeling aside and slaps on a smile and he pretends harder than he’s ever had to before.


	4. another thing to fall

_January, 2020_

.

.

.

.

Breakfast on the Queen’s veranda had gone from being mildly tense, with Shuri not speaking a word in his direction and Steve giving most of his attention to what Bruce was talking about with Jane, to eerily silent when Steve got the message from Natasha.

 

 “Jesus, that’s…wow.” Bruce pushes his plate away and stares out past the balcony blindly.

 

“Yeah, I know. Gracious.” Steve rubs his eyes and sighs, a heavy one that can only come from someone who’d lived through something as traumatic as watching his best friend die more than once in front of him. There was a significant amount of sympathy in that sigh, and Tony felt he could understand to a degree, but even he couldn’t quite grasp the pain of watching not only his wife turn to ash in front of him, but desperately holding on to both of his young children as it happened to them, too.

 

Peter had been remarkably close, but he wouldn’t take Clint’s anguish away by comparing the two. (And really, Pete wasn’t his, he was May’s and May hadn’t even gotten to say goodbye. She'd rushed out the door to work that morning of the field trip after an argument the night before and-)

 

“Where did Natasha say she found him?” Jane asks, her voice quiet and strained and he knows everyone is thinking of the ones they’d watched. Shuri had been the only one blessedly unconscious while all the others had disappeared; perhaps there was a torment in that, too, because her eyes were blank and glassy, her gaze far away. He resisted the urge to reach out and touch her just to let her know he was still there, that she still had him. She probably couldn’t have cared less if he were, though. She hadn’t given him the time of day for the last three weeks.

 

And not for the first time did he wonder if leaving her on his anniversary had been a mistake. There was a ever present current of guilt that swelled up in his chest when he thought of it that way, especially considering that Pepper had spent the better part of that week curled up in bed watching old Golden Girls reruns instead of celebrating. The decent part of him, the little bit that was left, understood. She was tired, and irritable and the baby was pressing on her bladder and she was so sick of getting kicked in the ribs. But the part of him that kept coming back to Wakanda for a taste of Shuri, who went to the bathroom at night while his wife slept and rewatched the video they’d made of him eating her out on her balcony and jacked off so he could finally sleep, felt like a petulant, selfish little asshole.

 

He _was_ a selfish asshole. There really wasn’t any way around that.

 

Tony shook himself from those thoughts for long enough to catch the tail end of Steve’s solemn conversation. “And when she broke down the doors he was huddled up inside with Lila’s teddy bear clutched to his chest. Said he didn’t even recognize her at first he was so gone.”

 

“Poor guy. I really just…wow.” Bruce shook his head and wiped his mouth, his eggs cold and forgotten along with everyone else’s remaining breakfast. “So she’s gonna stay with him or…”

 

“Yeah. She’s the only person he’ll say a word to. Not more than about five. How she managed to get the story out of him is beyond me, but maybe it just retraumatized him and now he…he can’t…”

 

Steve cut off and pressed his fingers to his eyes, his voice catching at the end, and for a moment, Tony honestly forgot how much he couldn’t stand Steve. No matter his own grievances with the man he’d considered a friend ( _I thought you were my friend, I thought…_ ) he wouldn’t even accuse him of not being genuine.

 

Well, at least not to anyone but _him_. But he was tired of dwelling on that, or the sharp pain that it sent him when he was unfortunate enough to. Whatever. Fuck Steve.

 

When lunch clears, he lingers on the veranda and finishes his lemon seltzer, stares out into the horizon and pretends the entire world isn’t pressing down on him and threatening to swallow him whole. Steve turns to watch him and out the corner of his eye, Tony can see a million different emotions pass across his face. His stomach twists when it settles into something like disappointment.

But he never says a word so Tony ignores him. If Steve doesn’t ask, Tony won’t tell, and he hopes to god that’s enough.

 

It won’t be.

 

* * *

 

She’s wrapped up in a blanket on her patio that evening when he’s finally graced with a message that tells her to come see him. Tony thinks for just one second he could ignore her and fall asleep with the image of his son pushing against Pepper’s belly behind his eyelids. She’d sent him the video that afternoon and he watches it over and over, tries to remind himself that this is what was important and that the sulking, pouting girl queen he so desperately wanted to just talk to him wasn’t worth it.

 

He did a lot of lying, but he couldn’t even lie about that for long enough for it to stick. Shuri was worth entirely too much, and that was the danger of it all. So he pretended like waiting the ten minutes between her text and him getting out of bed hadn’t been an exercise in incredible self control and he slipped down the darkened corridor, his feet carrying him toward the queen’s chambers by muscle memory alone. His head was in a million different places at once. But he has enough presence of mind to type in her passcode and slip into her darkened room, finding her outside like he figured she would be. He taps at the glass that separates the balcony from her bedroom and she turns her head to acknowledge him. The look in her eyes startles him.

 

“Sit,” she says, gesturing to the seat directly across from hers. He waits only a beat before he sighs but obeys.

 

“What’s going on? What’s so important that you pull me out of bed and demand I come to your room? You haven’t said shit to me since I came back.”

 

“I’m sorry.”

 

He’s a little thrown off that she actually apologized. “I uh...okay. I’ll accept that.” He hopes she’ll smirk at him, the way she does when she’s humoring his dumb ass, but she just nods and then she’s quiet again, though her eyes never leave his. She watches him for an impossibly long moment and he realizes she’s stalling for something. Something is off but he can’t pinpoint what just yet. She lowers her gaze to her hands and draws in a deep breath.

 

“I debated for a while on whether to tell you this or not. Part of me wanted to just...deal with it myself and never say a word but...”

 

Tony frowns. “What, something wrong with the machine or…”

 

She shakes her head. “Everything seems to be moving rather well in that regard.” She pauses and licks her lips and Tony can see her hands shaking, though they’re clasped tight across her lap. He feels his heart start to thump and for some reason he can’t stop staring at her hands, though she starts talking once more and when she does, he nearly misses what she says. He blinks and stares at her face in disbelief.

 

But why should he be so surprised? That’s pure foolishness on his part.

 

“Come again? I didn’t...I could have sworn you’d said you-”

 

“I am.” She attempts a sarcastic smile but nothing comes but a grimace and then tears slip down her cheeks and Tony wants to sink into the floor because this is his fault, this is all his fault. “I’m pregnant.”

 

He struggles for anything to say but nothing comes out. His mouth opens, gaping like a fish out of water but he can’t find words to form in his tangled brain worth a damn, until she growls in frustration and slings her blanket from her shoulders and stalks back into her room. It takes him far too long to follow her but when he does, he knows what he wants to ask.

 

“Are you sure?”

 

She laughs, bitterly. “I’ve taken every test I can get my hands on. I’ve skipped my cycle, my tits feel like someone donkey punched them, and I can’t stop vomiting up even a glass of water.” Shuri wipes her face and shrugs as if there’s no other explanation. “So yes. I’m pregnant.”

 

Tony can think of a few reasons for her symptoms that have nothing to do with being knocked up. Stomach flu could explain the vomiting, stress could be delaying her period. The tests might be faulty, he doesn’t know. But he knows too that she’s probably really actually pregnant. And there’s no reason why she couldn’t be. They hadn’t been careful in that regard and Tony can admit he hadn’t even worried about being careful. Getting her pregnant had been the last thing on his mind.

 

“Okay. Okay, so…” He swallows and fumbles with the hem of his shirt as he struggles to process what she’d said. And in the few seconds that ticked by in his silence, realization finally and completely struck him.

 

Shuri was pregnant, and so was Pepper and not only was his wife about to have his child, but so was his girlfriend and...fuck. This was a mess, a fucking mess, _holy shit_.

 

“What are you gonna do?” _What are_ **we** _gonna do?_ he thinks, cause he won’t let her do this alone.

 

“I don’t know. I’m four weeks, so…”

 

“You’ve still got time to…”

 

She nods. She presses her mouth into a line and waves her hands about wildly, her face crumbling into a sob and she starts to cry.

 

“I don’t want to. I don’t think, I...I don’t know.”

 

He knows he should be the pragmatic realist and tell her it’d be for the best, but he can’t help but glance down to her tummy, still flat, or to her tear streaked, beautiful face and imagine a baby with her smile and his eyes and his heart clenches and he nearly drops to his knees then and begs her not to. It’s not his decision to make, and he knows if she decides she’ll have an abortion (the right thing to do, probably, the sensible thing) he’ll support her. It’s her choice.

 

But god, he wants her to keep it. He wants it so bad and he has to bite his tongue to keep from telling her he does.

 

Instead, he moves to where she stands and shakes as she cries, silent but no less wracking, and he pulls her into his arms. She resists at first, until the warmth of him spreads across her skin and then she’s grasping onto his shirt and sobbing into his neck and he kisses her temple and tells her it’ll all be alright.

 

It’ll be alright.

 

It will.

 

He has no right to hope that it will, but he hopes, so hard.

 

* * *

 

He spends the next week in a weird limbo. Shuri insists he’s the first to know except for her doctor who’s sworn to secrecy.

 

“Mama doesn’t even know,” she says, shoulder to shoulder with him in the lab. She talks in the quiet voice of two people who share a dangerous secret and Tony wonders if maybe that’s true. If she has the child, it’ll be heir to the Wakandan throne, no matter his or her father’s American heritage or their illegitimate status. It’s not like he could marry Shuri and make this right, even if he wanted.

 

He wonders, as she solders a bit of wire to a panel that’ll fit the machine, if he wants to.

 

If he hadn’t already said vows and signed papers and given Pepper a ring, would he have married Shuri in some shotgun wedding in Wakanda? He asks her how that would have worked,  just to get her mind off of the difficult choice she’ll have to make.

 

She doesn’t say anything at first, as she’s thinking and then she shrugs.

 

“I have no idea. I honestly don’t. We’ve never had that sort of issue happen before.”

 

“You’ve never had illegitimate kids in the Wakanda royal family?”

 

She offers him a bit of a smirk, but doesn’t look up from what she’s doing. “We have. We don’t call them illegitimate, though. They’re simply the King’s children. Of course, the children of his lawful wife are given the best possible chance of taking the throne, but anyone of royal blood has a shot at Warrior Falls. So...that includes anyone apart of the big tribes. It’s why M’Baku was allowed to fight my brother back then.” Her hands still and she pauses long enough that he’s unsure if she’ll continue. “And why my cousin was able to take the throne when we presumed him dead.”

 

Tony wants to say something, anything, to comfort her because he can tell she’s getting in that odd place she gets when she thinks of T’Challa. But the lab isn’t the place for it and anyway, he isn’t sure if she’d want any comforting right now. It seems to be enough that she can focus on work. He wants to ask her more about her cousin, too, the now infamous Erik Stevens, aka N’Jadaka, aka Killmonger, but he’s sure it’ll just put her in a bad mood. That’s still a sore spot for her and she’d admitted she still occasionally had nightmares about that entire ordeal.

 

She says nothing else about it and he doesn’t ask. Instead, they keep working and consort back and forth with Bruce and Jane, who are tweaking formulations and applying them to the machine a bit at a time. And then Shuri’s kimoyo beads vibrate once and she double taps them quickly, reading a message he only can see snippets of before she quickly closes out of that holo.

 

“So you...uh...you decided?”

 

She’s very quiet and still but then she nods.

 

“The appointment is next Friday,” she says, her hands shaking just a bit when he reaches over and grabs one. He pulls it under the table and strokes the inside of her palms to calm himself, because a little part of him had hoped to god she wouldn’t go through with this. But he knows this is probably for the best; she’s got too much to do and being saddled with a kid wouldn’t be the best idea. The scandal would be enough to throw everything off kilter. He can only imagine the outrage from the council, or her mother’s poisonous looks if it came out he’d knocked her up.

 

“Want me to come?” He will. He won’t let her do something this big by herself, he’d promised he wouldn’t when she told him. He’s almost relieved when she nods and tries not to cry and focuses her attention firmly on her soldering. And Tony’s mind swirls with a baby that won’t be now, one he shouldn’t already be so attached to and he tries not to cry, too.

 

* * *

 

She never gets a chance to bring him to her appointment because he’s woken out his sleep two nights after, in the dead of the night, in an empty bed. His bags are haphazardly packed at the foot of it and several Dora filter around inside his room and Shuri is standing beside his bed, her hands on his shoulders, shaking him awake.

 

“Tony,” she calls to him, calm as can be. Too calm. He doesn’t like how calm she is and as his mind struggles to wake, he can hear a little bit of a commotion outside. What the hell is going on? He asks her and he sees the flash of panic in her eyes and his stomach drops.

 

“There’s a so called resistance outside,” she starts, and that’s enough to get him up and out of bed. He looks around for something to put on, so he can go out and join her in the fight. He hates that he forgot to bring the nano suit this time. He didn’t think it was needed. She watches him, tries to explain that some of the dissidents had gotten fed up with her promises and taken matters into their own hands. They were outside of the palace and demanding she abdicate.

 

“They’ve got some coward they’re thinking of pushing onto the throne,” she says, and Tony growls in frustration because none of his clothes are available, and he’s itching to whip ass just because she’s so upset. “They’re going to put me in prison, clean house, start over. I don’t...I can’t understand why they just can’t have faith and wait-Tony, stop!” He glances up to her and she’s panting, her hands reaching up to hold him still.

 

“I need to go home and get my suit.”

 

“No. Bruce and Jane are already on their way to the jet, you’ve got to go with them, I’ve got to get you out of the country so they don’t-”

 

“I’m gonna mow all of these sons of bitches down and you’ll keep your crown, okay? I won’t let anyone push you off that throne, pretty baby. Not when we’re so close and-”

 

“No!” She shakes her head vehemently, and he swallows.

 

“Why?”

 

“Because I have to do this the Wakandan way. I have to...I have to show them I’m not a pushover, that I’m not some silly little girl but a force to be reckoned with.”

 

He reaches out to touch her cheek and she leans into it and he feels his heart swell. He loves her so fucking much. “You are. You’re a goddamn hurricane.”

 

“I’ll be alright,” she says in a rush, but he isn’t so sure, and god, he’s so fucking scared. He wants to dig his heels in anyway and stay put because she needs him now, more than ever. But he knows why she’s doing this. As selfish as she could be, he knows that if he dies trying to help her now, he’ll never get to meet his son and she is selfless enough to want to spare Pepper _that_ pain, at least.

 

“You better fucking promise me,” he grits out, as he stuffs his feet into his boots, already ready on the floor beside his bed. He’s going to leave this country in pajamas and combat boots. It’s almost funny. “You better make sure not a scratch lands on you or I’ll-”

 

She’s grinning like a cat and actually laughing, though he knows she’s terrified. “Oh, don’t worry. Even if I get a scratch, I’ll give one back far worse.” She tugs at the collar of his nightshirt and straightens up as tall as she’s able to. “I’m your Kitten, Tony Stark. But right now, I’ve got to be Wakanda’s Black Panther. Go let me be a Panther.”

 

So he does. He grabs his bags and follows her and the Dora (he counts only 9 instead of 11 as usual, and while he knows Okoye is probably off doing some of the heavy lifting, he wonders where the other is. But he doesn’t ask. There isn’t time.) There’s yelling in the distance and the quinjet is fired up and ready to go. Bruce and Jane are joining him like he’d been told, the former anxiously awaiting him on the tarmac outside the jet and the latter standing on the lift while on the phone. Probably with Thor or Brunhilde, he imagines. He thinks he should call Pepper or Rhodey and let them know what’s going on, but the only thing he really wants to do right now is drag Shuri on board and make her come with him, everyone else be damned.

 

Of course, she’d claw his eyes out and slit his throat before they even got across Nigeria, so he doesn’t.

 

Instead, when he pauses at the lift, following Bruce into the jet, and turns to say one last goodbye, he nearly loses his mind when he sees tears in her pretty eyes and maybe it’s the look on his face or the way he tries to smile because she rushes up to him and hugs him tight, her fingers curling in his messy hair and her breath hitching in little sobs.

 

“I’m going to fix this and then you’ll come back and we’ll fix everything else and then…”

 

“I don’t know,” he says, because he doesn’t, but dammit, he’ll have to figure it out.

 

“We’ll get to that when we get to that, won’t we?” She holds on to him for a moment longer and no longer caring that anyone is watching, he drops his duffle and reaches down and gently grabs her chin, then presses the sweetest, softest kiss he can onto her trembling lips.

 

Who gives a shit if anyone sees? It could very well be the last time he sees her, and he wants her to know so very badly how much he loves her, but he can’t get his mouth to moving. She pulls back and presses her arms to her chest, crossed over in the sign of her country and he follows as if he’s outside his body.

 

“Wakanda forever,” he says softly, and his queen smiles for real before she turns, her Dora behind her, as she runs off to fight the fray and keep her claim on her throne.

 

* * *

 

To his credit, Bruce doesn’t say a word about the kiss. He just gives Tony the oddest look, and sits at the copilot’s seat and ignores him for three hours. Jane, however, is chatty as hell, probably because she’s nervous as he is about all the unrest.

 

“You’re gonna explain what all that was about, right?” she asks him, and he shrugs. He doesn’t think he needs to. The only thing he needs to do is get home and get his head straight and maybe sorta plot some kind of way to get back in his lab and figure out how to help his pretty baby. That’s what he’ll do. He’ll plot something out and it’ll keep him from going insane with not knowing how she is.

 

“Nothing to explain, hon,” he tells her, his voice surprisingly level, his face neutral.

 

“Okay.” She sits back and taps her fingers on her knee and for a few minutes, there’s silence, just the rush of the air across the jet and their breathing. And then: “I told you they had something going on, Bruce.”

 

Bruce sighs, long and slow and deep and Tony wishes he could have at least had some sort of self control to not kiss Shuri in front of everyone. The Dora know all of his dirty business, but Bruce had probably been under the impression that he’d kept that first clandestine kiss months ago to just the one. Tony actually feels badly for Bruce right then. He’d hate to be in his shoes, full of faith and concern and love even for a man as fucked up as Tony was.

 

“You’re gonna tell Pep, right? About this whole...whatever it is?”

 

Bruce’s voice is so tight it could snap and Tony wants to say that he’ll admit to that, but he knows he won’t.

 

“I’m not saying anything if I don’t have to.” Maybe there’s a little threat in that statement. Maybe not. Either way, Jane’s brow raises and Bruce’s look sears through his soul, and then he’s just sad. And he drops it.

 

“It had better have just been a kiss, goddamnit,” he grumbles. Tony doesn’t tell him otherwise. It’s better to just leave it at that.

 

For most of the flight, Tony dwells on how bad an emotional affair would be in comparison to a simply physical one. On the off chance he did tell Pepper, or admit to anything if she found out, he thinks of how he could spin this so that it seems like it’s less than what it is. He goes with physical. It’s most definitely still betrayal, but at least she could assume his heart wasn’t in it. Unfortunately for Tony, his heart most definitely was in it. It was so far down deep in this mess he wouldn’t ever find that part of it again.

 

They land at the compound the next day around noon, dirty January snow still crusting the sidewalks and dotting the landscape in little piles. It’ll probably snow again before spring hits; it’s been oddly cold this year, even more than he’s used to for New York.

 

He doesn’t make it out of the jet before Rhodey’s running out the front doors, the most excited but eager look on his face.

 

“Tony, you’re back right on time! Pep’s gone into labor, man, I tried calling over at the palace, but-”

 

“There’s been some sort of...political upheaval,” Jane supplies with a slight smile. She stretches and pulls her phone out once more, searching for a signal so she can let someone in Norway she’s on her way home for a while. “Think I can stay long enough to meet the new baby, Tony?”

 

He nods absently and ignores Bruce’s glower and Rhodey’s obvious confusion at the tension between all three. Instead, he heads into the house to find his wife on the couch, her face white and a little pained, but she smiles, holding her arms out to him happily.

 

“He’s a little early,” she says, kissing him deeply when he bends down to pull her close. He still smells like Wakanda, like sweet blood oranges and crisp woods, and he wonders if his mouth tastes like Shuri. He wishes he felt worse about that, but he doesn’t.

 

“He’ll be fine, though,” Tony says, giving her a gentle smile. “Why aren’t we already at the hospital?”

 

“Doc says I don’t need to come in till the contractions are less than five minutes apart,” she tells him, rubbing her swollen belly. Really, she only had another week and a half till her due date, so he isn’t worried that the baby will be in any danger. He can feel the anticipation amp up and then he’s as excited as Rhodey had been, albeit a bit more tired and stressed. Pepper leans into him and sighs, and then she grabs his shirt, clenching her fists into it tightly as a contraction sweeps over her. Her skin pales a little more, and then color floods her cheeks as she hisses out, slow and low.

 

“God, those are getting closer and closer and people tell you all the time that labor is painful, but not like this.” She attempts a laugh, but the contraction apparently isn’t quite done cause she just groans and Tony kisses her temple, lets her clench his shirt until he’s afraid she’ll tear it. Pepper sucks in breath after breath, the way the classes had taught her to, and settles for a few minutes, until just under five have passed another wave hits her. “Yeah...yeah, it’s time to go, Tony, we’ve gotta-”

 

“I’m goin’!” he says in a rush, popping up off the couch and scrambling for the overnight bag, scurrying around the house like a chicken with his head cut off when he can’t find it.

 

“Rhodey’s probably already got it in the car!” Pepper yells. She laughs and he turns to watch her, all baby belly and messy red hair and he loves her, he swears he does.

 

He wishes he were so much better for her, though, because the other woman he loves is on the other side of the world and he wants so badly to be there with her, it’s painful.

 

He pushes Shuri from his mind as best he can, a damn near impossible feat until Pepper hauls up off the couch with his help and Rhodey comes down the stairs with the overnight back and a laugh in the back of his throat. And Bruce watches him with sad, disapproving eyes, secrets under his tongue and a rebuke in his head, but he doesn’t mention anything about a kiss on the tarmac in Wakanda, or one at the lab months and months ago.

 

He doesn’t say anything and neither does Tony, and the inbetween of then and when it all goes to hell is like the calm before the storm.

 

_In the eye of a hurricane there is quiet, for just a moment...a yellow sky._

 

* * *

 

They name him Randall Jude, Randall for one of Pepper’s favorite great uncles and Jude after Tony’s favorite Beatles song. Pepper thinks Jude for short would suit him and Tony agrees, still marveling at the sweet face of the tiny little boy he’d helped create. He’s all Pepper, the only hint that he’s a Stark in the color of his soft hair.

 

“He’ll look more like you later,” Pepper assures him softly the night they bring him home, but Tony isn’t so sure. He’s got the milkiest skin and the bluest eyes, though he’s been told those could change. He has a feeling they won’t; he’ll take after his mother and be fair and tall and slender, a good looking kid, a quiet one.

 

He spends every day he can with his son. Pepper takes an extended maternity leave to recover, though she works a bit from home the longer the days stretch into weeks. His life is almost blissfully domestic now. He’s got two best friends that drop by and spoil his son; Rhodey rocks him to sleep as The Temptations play in the lab and Bruce lets the baby rest on his chest while he reads. And Happy is there too, beaming like a proud uncle.

 

But the tension between Bruce and Tony is still too thick to be comfortable and he keeps his visits to a minimum. It’s not anything anyone else notices, he hopes. He doesn’t want to explain why his best friend is avoiding him because then he’d have to explain his relationship with Shuri and he really didn’t need to get into the specifics for that.

 

When Pepper goes back to work, he settles in as house dad. He changes diapers and does laundry, watches swaddling tutorials on youtube and learns how to make a bottle perfectly in three months flat. Jude is the sweetest baby, all soft coos and snuggles, his downy hair growing in thicker as he grows and his cries settling just from the soft rocking of his father to the sound of Sam Cooke on the stereo system. He astounds him, with how sharp he is and how beautiful, and Tony falls so far down the rabbit hole of love for this tiny little boy that he can’t find his way out. It’s wonderful and terrifying at the same time, but he knows the child was worth every minute of everything that has ever taken place.

 

They hire a nanny, just to give him a little bit a break and to cook because he’s terrible at it, but he wants to learn, so he pulls up youtube for that, too, and spends some of his time in the big kitchen, learning how to put together a basic alfredo sauce or season his linguine just right. Eventually, Pepper comes to love it when he makes dinner. Bruce comes over once to try it out and the tension between them isn’t completely gone, no, but it’s eased up enough that he can laugh and not feel fake about it. And Rhodey is always around, always picking on him with Happy about his new status. But he knows all three are happy for him.

 

He’s got his son and his wife, though busy, comes home every night and slides into bed beside him and curls up close. They talk about the future, of what they’ll do once the snap is undone, when Tony can get back into Wakanda and fix everything. He thinks, for just a moment, that his little time as the secret lover to the young queen was just a weird, fevered dream and that he’ll spend his life perfectly content like this.

 

And then one day in mid May, Pepper mentions over chicken adobo he’d put together in the crockpot that Wakanda’s gone dark on all fronts. He stills, blood turning to ice, because even though he hadn’t heard a word at all from Shuri, he’d been able to get little snippets of information from the bits that were on the news or from sources he trusted on the internet. He pulls out his phone and types in the country to google and finds exactly what she’d said. She looks at him sympathetically.

 

“You hadn’t heard? It’s all over the internet. Hell, I figured Rhodey would have said something by now. I mean, he’s been busy too but-”

 

“Like...nothing? Dark as in, no word whatsoever?”

 

Pepper shakes her head. Tony’s stomach drops, and he shifts his son in his lap as he feeds him, tries hard not to scream.

 

“No. They um...they’re saying there’s no way in, no way out. No communication. Nothing.”

 

When he doesn’t move, his eyes unmoving from the spot on the table and his hands shaking, his wife reaches out to touch him and he almost jerks back startled.

 

“I’m sure she’s alright, Tony,” Pepper says gently. Jude wiggles around on his lap when his hand falls, the bottle shifting in his mouth, and the beginnings of a wail start. Pepper gets up from her seat, cooing to her son and pulls him out of Tony’s lap, righting the bottle and rocking him as he starts to feed again.

 

“Tony? Love, hey. Look at me.”

 

He does and he hopes to god it’s not written all over his face.

 

But he knows that if anything at all has happened to that girl, it’s going to kill him. He’s not going to survive it if she’s dead. He knows there’s a chance she is fine, that she’s doing this as a protocol, that she needs to reorganize and regroup and without the outside world all in her business, but he wishes to god she’d tell him in some way that she’s fine.

 

He doesn’t bother finishing dinner. He gets up and pulls out his phone and dials Shuri’s number fifteen times but it goes straight to voicemail every time. He calls Steve Rogers, mostly out of desperation, and gets nothing on that end, too, but he gets a response from Natasha, who picks up on the fifth ring and answers, groggy and sleepy. He realizes it’s probably the middle of the night in Europe.

 

“It’s gotta be bad if you’re calling me this late,” she grumbles.

 

“Wakanda’s gone dark, Nat. And I can’t get ahold of Steve, either, and-”

 

“Wait. Wait, what do you mean it’s gone...hold up.” She mumbles something unintelligible in the background and grunts as he assumes she gets out of bed. He almost gets up and paces the length of his lab to keep from rambling but he sits still in case she knows something he doesn’t. Except it seems, when she comes back to the phone, no doubt after checking the net and her own sources, that she doesn’t know much else either.

 

“Fuck.”

 

“I know. I mean, I could maybe understand it if she were to shut shit down, the coup and all. You know about that, right?”

 

“Mmhm. Stevie filled me in.”

 

He doesn’t miss the way she says Steve’s name, or the diminutive and he almost laughs because he was right about that. There was something going on there. He’d have to find out what one day, when he was sure Shuri wasn’t dead and Wakanda wasn’t currently in flames without her there. “I was evac’ed out that night and I haven’t heard shit from her since.”

 

“From the queen? Sure she’s alright, though. She’s a tough kid.”

 

“Yeah, I know, I just-”

 

“Tony.” Her voice is stern, but kind. “You really care about her, huh?”

 

He swallows spit and wipes his sweaty brow and tries to keep it to himself just how much he does. _I love her. I would give the fucking universe for her. I would tear myself in half and set myself on fire to keep her safe. I’d bleed to make her smile. You don’t understand. You don’t. Nobody does._

 

“Yeah. She’s like...she’s special, Nat.”

 

He hears her soft sigh and he hopes that his little confession reminds her more of when she’d teased him about unofficially adopting Pete than when he’d fessed and told her he’d been in love with Pepper for a decade.

 

“I know. You and brilliant kids, I swear. How’s the baby, by the way? I’m eventually going to come over and meet him in person, I am. Clint’s just been doing so well lately and I didn’t want him alone in case it got bad again and-”

 

“You’re not worried?”

 

“I am,” she says, and then she blows out a breath. “But if Steve’s gone dark, and he has, cause I just tried calling him on both his phones and-”

 

Tony scoffs. “He’s got two phones? Figures.”

 

“One for you and one for everyone else, Tony,” Nat says, in that way she does when she’s sick of two of her favorite people fighting over now meaningless bullshit. Or, at least to Tony, it’s meaningless. It’s probably still an issue and they might could possibly work it out if he wasn’t a stubborn jackass but he is. “But anyway, yeah. He’s got two phones. Neither pick up. He wouldn’t ignore me, if he wasn’t busy. He’s probably over there helping, and I’m pretty sure he’s got as soft a spot for that girl as you do, so...yeah. She’s fine.”

 

He knows he should be more upset about the fact that Steve Rogers of all people is probably in Wakanda and he isn’t and he hasn’t been allowed to help, but he can’t. If Natasha says she’s fine, she has to be. The woman has a supernatural sixth sense about something bad happening to people, and this wasn’t one of those times.

 

So he drops it. He lets Nat talk to him about Clint and how well he’d been holding up. He listens with interest about his therapies and how he’d been writing and putting his feelings into words and how he was clinging to the hope he’d get Laura and the kids back soon.

 

“And Wanda, too,” Nat adds sadly. “You know he’d pretty much adopted her too. Uncle Clint. God, I’d love to have him as an uncle, you know? He’s such a good dude.”

 

He was. Tony couldn’t disagree with that. And when he hung up, his chest still heavy but not as much, he couldn’t help but think of the fact that he wasn’t, no matter what Natasha Romanoff said.

 

He sits still in the quiet of his lab for a long while after that, until the monitor picks up Pepper reading Jude his nightly bedtime story and Tony wouldn’t miss that for the world.

 

* * *

 

Bruce finds the birthday pictures the same day he gets the call from Steve, and that is really when shit hits the fan. At least, that’s how he’ll remember it years from now. He’ll think back to when his life had been a comfortable lie and then switched into the painful truth, and it’ll be that day, early September, after a summer of private unease and matrimonial bliss. It’s a strange juxtaposition, to be so very involved in his son’s growth and his wife’s work and to make love to her again after she’d healed while he clung to and longed for something, anything from the girl across the globe who’d stolen his heart.

 

He hated it. And truthfully, he thinks that even though the bottom had fallen out of this soggy mess of a lie he called a life, he was a little relieved, too. He had someplace to go, even if it were down. He had somewhere to begin again.

 

He’s making adjustments to his new suit, the one he and Bruce had began work on when news of Wakanda’s global silence had spread. With nothing to do, he’d invited his friend and Jane over too, and the three of them had fiddled around in his lab for hours, Jude strapped to his chest and music playing and it had been so nice, so normal.

 

It wasn’t that normal, though, because there was a glaring spot where Shuri should have been, would have been if the world wasn’t teeter tottering on world war after the snap and so many people were still missing.

 

Dead. Technically, most of them had been considered dead, but Tony refused to think of it that way. They existed somewhere, he knew. He just didn’t know how to get them back just yet. But that’s what traveling to the past was for and once Shuri called him, opened up the borders again-

 

“The fuck is wrong with you?”

 

It’s the calmest kind of rage and Tony knows Bruce is doing everything in his power to not unleash the full fury of the Hulk on him. Tony looks up from his work and glances to Bruce confused at first, because he has no idea what he’s talking about. Except, Bruce holds up his phone, the one he’d let his friend use to airdrop pics of Jude from, and had probably found something he should have never seen.

 

His first thought is that he’d found their texts, ones he stubbornly refused to delete. And that would be bad enough. But he thinks he might could have wiggled his way out of just texts. No. There’s pictures on that phone, too, and when Bruce holds it up he sees the most incriminating of them all, Shuri on her knees in front of him, cum on her cheek and a grin on her face as his dick hovers beneath her chin.

 

Tony stops breathing and moves to grab the phone but Bruce hops back and holds it out of reach.

 

“I mean, you could lie and tell me this isn’t your dick, Tony, but it is.”

 

He can’t get a word out. It’s like someone has stolen his breath and his voice and the only thing he can do is listen to the ringing sirens of panic in his head, the dread in his gut, because Bruce knows and now everyone will and fuck, his best friend hates him now. He hates him.

 

“You’ve been fucking her this whole time, haven’t you?”

 

Tony nods because he still can’t get a word out. And he doesn’t know if it’s safe for Bruce to even hear his voice right now. He doesn’t.

 

“You’ve been fucking her while your wife, while the woman who loves you and has loved you for years was carrying your son. Fuck you. Fuck...if I had half of what you did. If I…” Bruce shakes his head and his laugh is scalding. “You’re a piece of shit.”

 

“Yeah.” It’s the only thing that’ll come out.

 

“Oh, so you know how shitty you are but you’re still doing this, huh?”

 

Bruce tosses the phone at his feet and paces the floor, hands waving back and forth, little glimpses of green peeking from his flannel.

 

“I hope to God you know how bad you’ve fucked up.”

 

“I do. I uh…”

 

“Fucking that kid when she’s lost so much...cause that’s the only way you’d ever get her in bed, wasn’t it? The hell would she want you when she had Bucky Barnes?”

 

Tony’s eyes narrow and he has the audacity to feel rage. God, all it took was a mention of that motherfucker’s name and his blood pressure shot through the roof.

 

“Fuck Bucky Barnes,” Tony growls, daring to walk up to Bruce and meet him nose to nose. “Fuck him, and fuck all his friends, and fuck his memory, too. He never had shit.”

 

Bruce snorts. “Oh? Is that why you’re so pissed, Tony? Cause he never had...shit? He had her. He _has_ her. She grieves for him and her brother and a whole slew of people and you crept in while she was vulnerable and hurting like that. What kind of asshole are you? I mean, I never thought you were perfect, but I thought you were so much better.”

 

“Yeah, fuck you, cause that’s not even-”

 

“Then tell me what the fuck happened!” Bruce screams and Tony’s glad they’re in the lab, that his son is sleep in the makeshift lab nursery with the soundproof walls, and that his wife and other best friend are gone. He doesn’t want to hash this out with them here. Not like this. He’s going to have to confess it eventually, but not yet, not like this.

 

Tony draws in a deep breath and clenches his fists, swallows back bile, and starts slowly.

 

“I kissed her,” he begins. That’s not entirely where it’d started, he knew, but it’s close. “I kissed her that night, and uh...we...we went back to my room and-”

 

“You told me it was just-”

 

“Bruce, shut up! Shut up and let me talk, okay?” He closes his eyes and his skin feels so hot it could melt steel. “Just...let me get this out. And then, if you wanna beat my ass after that, go for it.”

 

Bruce leans back with his arms crossed and his mouth is so tight, mostly Tony thinks, to keep from Hulking out right here before Tony’s had his say.

 

And then Tony tells him the rest of it, all of it, from the first time to her birthday, of how she’d called him Daddy that day because he called her Kitten, of how he’d fucked her through the lab that entire day, of how he’d fucked her that night and then made love to her that last time and gave her the red diamond necklace. He tells her how he’d fallen head over heels and how caught up he was in her web, how utterly lost, how he’d tried and failed to fight whatever he felt and how he had no idea what the hell he was going to do once Bucky Barnes was back. He leaves out the part about her being pregnant, because by now, she’d taken care of that, so no use in talking about a child that wasn’t ever going to be.

 

And Bruce doesn’t say anything for a very long time, long enough that when Jude wakes and starts to cry, Tony can pull him from the nursery and change him and feed him, then bring him back into the lab. And Bruce is still silent, watching his every move, almost as if he’s deciding where to slice him open.

 

 _Slit my throat,_ Tony thinks. _Kill me._

 

Instead, Bruce’s shoulders slump and his eyes fill with tears and he shakes his head. And Tony realizes that Bruce isn’t angry so much as he’s heartbroken. Fuck. That’s even worse.

 

“I’m gonna...look. You’ve gotta tell Pepper.”

 

“Not yet. I can’t, not-”

 

“You’re gonna tell her today,” Bruce says firmly, his voice giving no room for argument so Tony nods, and he looks down at his son and tries hard not to panic. He’d done this to himself. Why was he so damn scared now? _You weren’t scared when you were fucking Shuri like it was an addiction._

 

“Okay. Okay, I’ll...I’ll tell her.”

 

“I’m not saying shit. I’m not even going to be here. I’m headed out to see Jane tonight and by the time I get back, you’ll probably be divorced or close to it. But you know what? Fuck you. That’s what happens.” Bruce gives him a cruel smile and turns, heads up the stairs and pauses at the top. “If she takes you back, I hope to god you make sure you grovel at her feet and kiss the ground she walks on the rest of her life.”

 

Tony lets out a breath that burns his lungs like acid, and flops down on the couch, his skin cold and his body shivering.

 

_How the hell am I going to do this?_

 

He glances at his phone on the floor. The picture of Shuri staring up at him with that smile on her face still taunts him and he feels his body react to it the way it always does.

 

He wants to vomit.

* * *

 

Five hours later, right before Pepper gets home, he gets a call from a number he’s never seen and wouldn’t recognize no matter where it came from, but something tells him to answer it.

 

Jude is napping once again and the nanny, Carla, is over, making them salad and chicken fricassee. He’d have cooked, but he could barely function after his confrontation with Bruce, so he’d spent the rest of the time between then and now watching Bubble Guppies and staring at his phone. He thinks about bashing the phone in with a hammer or setting it on fire, but that won’t change the past and the pictures are still on the cloud and so he doesn’t bother doing either. He just sits.

 

When he picks the phone up, there’s static on the end before he hears Steve Rogers call his name.

 

“Tony?”

 

Tony damn near drops the phone but he’s already halfway up the stairs and to his bedroom. “Jesus fuck, Rogers where the hell are you?”

 

“I’m in...Wakan….she’s fine and….see you.”

 

“I can’t hear you, dude, hold on.”

 

He puts Steve on speaker and paces around the bedroom until he thinks he’s found a good signal. “Okay, okay what’s going on?”

 

“Wakanda. I’m in Wakanda and the queen wants to see you.”

 

“Fuck. She’s okay, though, right?”

 

Steve doesn’t say anything at first and Tony thinks the worst, that she’s injured and dying and wants to see him before she goes. He feels his stomach knot up but Steve has mercy on him and tells him she’s just fine.

 

“When can you come?”

 

Tony thinks Steve sounds a bit odd, a little too eager, even, but he doesn’t pay it much attention. He probably should, but he’s so happy that Shuri’s okay and he can see her again. He’s pulling out something to wear, thinking of how much extra to tip Carla for staying overnight. “Uh, like right now if you’ll give me a minute to put the suit on. Like, within the next few hours.”

 

“Oh, good. I’ll let her know.”

 

Steve hangs up without another word, which should have told him something odd was going on but he ignores that, too and meets Pepper in the hall on his way out the door.

 

“Hey, where’s the fire?”

 

“Wakanda called.”

 

Her eyes widen. “Holy shit. Is everything okay, is the queen-”

 

“I don’t know? I don’t...Steve called and said she wanted to see me. I guess she’s probably gonna call in Bruce and Jane too and I’m leaving, Carla’s got Jude and-”

 

“Go!” Pepper says, ushering him off with a kiss. “Be careful and tell her I’m glad she’s alright. Go!”

 

He’s not even present enough to feel guilty that he’s leaving his wife again to see another woman, but this is a special case, he thinks. So he shoots off up into the sky and toward Wakanda and for the hours it takes for him to get to her, the only thing he can think of is scooping Shuri into his arms and kissing her blind.

 

But she doesn’t meet him when he lands. He hits the tarmac instead of the balcony, just to be on the safe side since Steve is lurking around. Okoye meets him, spear in hand and a look on her face that for the first time in hours, makes him reconsider what he’s doing.

 

Maybe this isn’t a good thing. Maybe he should go home and just call Shuri from the safety of New York. But he’s here now. And goddamn, he wants to see her at least.

 

“Her Majesty waits for you in her office,” she says, her voice even more clipped and colder than it usually was. He wonders if she knows now. He has a feeling she always had but in the almost nine months since he’d been here and gone, something had come to a head. He doesn’t even bother to smile because it would just be an insult. He nods his head and follows her down the hall to her rooms, her office adjacent to it, and when Okoye knocks on the door, Steve Rogers greets him instead of Shuri.

 

It’s when he catches the look in those blue eyes does he realize this is a set up. It’s when Okoye gives Steve the slightest of satisfied smirks does he know he’s in for trouble. Steve pulls him bodily into the room and slams the door shut, and Tony takes a second to glance around just in case Shuri’s actually somewhere nearby. She isn’t. He knows it’s a futile attempt. He knows he’s alone in this room with a super soldier who’s got his shirt gripped in his hand and murder in his eyes.

 

“Did you know?”

 

Tony opens his mouth to ask what, but he doesn’t even get a word out because Steve punches him square in the gut and all the air rushes out his body. He slides to the floor and wraps his arms around his middle, the pain searing and vomit inducing.

 

“Did you know, Tony? When you ran off back home to your wife? Or did you leave her alone to do this all by herself like the useless coward you are?”

 

Steve hits him again, this time in the face, right in the jaw and it brings tears to his eyes. He gasps out and draws in enough air to glare up at Steve, his anger swirling alongside his pain. “Fuck you, Rogers. You don’t know shit.”

 

“I know enough.”

 

There’s another hit, this one to his eye, and another, to his nose, until all the punches start to blur and Tony’s head begins to swirl and he doesn’t even bother defending himself anymore. He can’t, not at this point. Steve’s got him pulled up by his now blood splattered shirt and he’s pummeling his face to the point that Tony can’t even feel it anymore. He can’t feel anything, just this overwhelming dark humor that he had this coming.

 

Distantly, he picks up the sound of the door opening and of a sharp shout, and then he’s not being punched anymore. He slumps to the floor and blood pours from his nose, his lip, the cut beneath his eye. He can’t see, and he licks his lip and hisses when he does, curls up into a ball and tries hard not to throw up because he’s already having a hard enough time breathing.

 

“What are you doing?!”

 

And something inside his chest soars because his pretty baby had come to his rescue.

 

“Shuri, I-”

 

“You will address me by my title, Captain Rogers!” she hisses, the authority in her tone so sharp it could cut diamonds. “And then you’ll explain to me why my guest, the one I specifically instructed you to invite into my home, is being assaulted!”

 

There’s a pause. Then Steve clears his throat and tries to give his reasoning for why he’d turned Tony’s face into ground meat.

 

“...I um...I was only trying to...to defend you, to defend your honor. He didn’t...he left you, your Majesty. When you needed him, he turned tail and ran, and while you’re-”

 

Tony isn’t sure what she’d done to cut him off but he’s quiet.

 

“He did no such thing. He left because I wanted him to leave. I told him to go and he obeyed me, much in the same way as you did when I requested your assistance. Did I make a mistake?”

 

“No. No, I swear. I...no.” Steve’s voice wavers a bit, softens, and Tony wants to roll his eyes but they hurt too much. “You know I would do whatever you needed. You know that.”

 

“Did I ever ask you to beat Tony Stark to a pulp?”

 

“No.”

 

“Then why did you? Something about my honor, hm? I can take care of myself just fine, Captain. I don’t need you defending my so called honor. Trust me, if Tony had offended me in any way by this-” and Tony struggles to open his eyes so he can see what she’s referring to, “then I would have done it myself.”

 

There’s silence, just the sounds of Tony’s pained breaths and then footsteps and the door opening. Shuri’s voice is softer now, much more subdued, but still firm.

 

“Don’t make me regret having you here, Steven,” she tells him, an edge to her voice. “Please. You’ve been indispensable but...I didn’t ask for this.”

 

“Yes, your Majesty,” he says, his voice so ashamed that Tony feels a little bit sad for him. Only a little. He moves around on the floor a bit when the feeling starts to come back into his face and groans at the pain of it. And then the door closes behind him and Shuri sighs.

 

“Bast, he fucked your face all the way up.” She sounds both incredibly annoyed and borderline amused, and to be fair, it’s not like it was unwarranted.

 

Tony tries to chuckle. It comes out more like a pained huff. “Good thing you showed up when you did,” he slurs, his lips still swollen and his jaw aching so bad that even swallowing is painful. So he shuts up and lets her pull him off the floor, slumps over into one of her chairs and keeps his mouth closed as she tends to him.

 

It’s enough to have her this close to him again. She’s warm, alive, she’s fine, she’s perfect, even, swooping in like an angry mother panther to take care of him. When her fingers graze his face, he bites back a wince and lets her spread the salve across his skin, and instantly he feels his skin tighten then warm, as it works on the bruises and cuts, and finally the pain. The swelling in his eyes go down one after the other and he can blink them freely, and stare into her gorgeous face.

 

She still looks the same, though her hair is a little different. The braids expand out from the middle of her head and are dripping in beautiful wooden beads, one single one coming down the center where a cowry shell adorns it. And he notices she glows, like an angel, all soft skin and round cheeks.

 

Her face is fuller. He tilts his head and reaches out to touch her and she draws in a breath, and he worries she’ll pull back but she leans into his touch, the way she had the night he’d left.

 

But it’s when she smiles, when she leans in to kiss his lips softly, careful of the ointment still spread across the bottom one, does he realize what’s different.

 

There’s something round and firm poking into his chest and when he looks down he sees the swell of her belly beneath her breasts, breasts that are much bigger than before and that explains the fullness of her face or how heavy her steps were or-

 

 _Fuck_. That explains Okoye’s reaction to seeing him and why Steve put a whipping on his ass. He knew. There’s no way in the world he couldn’t have known because Shuri was most definitely, and quite heavily, pregnant.

 

He thinks he starts to cry, but his head spins so hard he doesn’t know if it’s tears or sweat.

 

Minutes later, he’s curled up in bed beside her, his arm around her middle because he most definitely did cry. He’d cried because he’d thought she’d gotten rid of the baby, because he had fought for months to rid his mind of the idea of their child and what could have been. And here she was in the flesh, carrying the child to term, her small body wobbling along as the weight of the baby she carried made her walk a bit off center. It was adorable and beautiful and he wanted to scream and laugh and cry all over again.

 

“I thought you said-”

 

“Yeah. I couldn’t. I didn’t really have time to, anyway,” she says, her hand entwined with his. She pushes back against him and hums pleased when he nips at her ear and pushes his hips up. “I um...I went ahead and decided not to worry about going through with the procedure after the uprising was handled.”

 

“You’ll tell me about it?” he asks, because he wants to know, because he’s curious to know what Steve’s role was in all this and why Wakanda had to go dark. Had it gotten that bad?

 

“I will. Tomorrow. I didn’t ask you to come here for that.”

 

“Okay.”

 

“I wanted...I wanted you to know about her.”

 

“Ah.” He smiles against the skin on the back of her neck. “A girl?”

 

“Mmhm.” Shuri rolls over best she can with her belly in the way and pulls his hand to rest it right below her heart. “You can feel her wiggling. She’s in here moving about. I think I woke her up during the confrontation.”

 

Tony drops his eyes to where his hand rests and scoots a bit further down in the bed, and presses his cheek there. “Hi baby girl,” he says softly, his voice nearly cracking when he realizes this is real. This is actually happening. He’s going to be the father of a daughter and he’s so happy in spite of how fucked up all this is. And just to further prove she’s real, his baby girl kicks, hard, making him laugh and then choke out a soft sob.

 

“Oh god, I can’t...I just-”

 

“The first time I ever felt her move I cried. Like a baby. And my mother told me that it’d eventually get on my nerves, but it still hasn’t.” Shuri threaded her fingers through his hair and let him lay there like that for a long while.

 

“How’s your son?”

 

Tony could feel his chest swell at the thought of Jude.

 

“Beautiful. Smart already. Sweet as pie. I love him so much.”

 

Shuri gives him a smile, but it’s sad. “I’m glad. I hope he knows one day how lucky he is.”

 

Tony scoffs. “To have me? I’m a royal fuck up.”

 

“Yes. Yes you are. But you’re not a bad person. You’ve just made some very shitty decisions. I was was one of them.”

 

Tony shakes his head, though he knows she’s right. “Nope. You’re not a shitty decision, pretty baby. You’re the best.”

 

She snorts and giggles a bit though he can see tears in her eyes. And then she sobers and her mouth presses into a line.

 

“What’s wrong?” Had he done or said something to make her upset?

 

“If you don’t want to publicly claim her, it’s fine. It’ll be easier, I think, if you don’t.”

 

Tony stares at her wide eyed and unbelieving. “Why would I...no. She’s mine, yeah?”

 

Shuri nods.

 

“Then I’m claiming her.” He frowns at the thought of what he has to do now when he goes home, and when he catches her eye again, he knows she knows what it is. “I’m gonna tell her. When I get home, I will. It’ll get out and I’d rather be the one to tell her.”

 

“Tell her I’m sorry,” Shuri insists, though Tony wonders if she really is. But he says he will. And he pulls her close and wraps his arms around her, swollen belly and all, and waits for the feeling of little feet pressing against her skin.

 

* * *

 

Shuri tells him about the uprising the next morning, over blood oranges and omelettes for breakfast. He listens as she tries to remain pragmatic about it all. She’s awfully forgiving, too.

 

“I let M’Baku go,” she says, her voice sadder than it has any right to be. “I know he’s never cared much for me, but he was my brother’s blood brother. That had to mean something.”

 

“He tried to kill you.”

 

She shrugs. “What is the saying? All’s fair in love and war?” She snorts, painfully and picks at her orange. “It was war. But I wouldn’t have him executed. He did what he thought was just. Was it? I don’t know.”

 

“And your friend..the Dora?”

 

That makes her stop what her hands are doing and she opens her mouth, but nothing comes out and he regrets asking about it. She’d been killed in the fight, on the opposite side of her queen’s armies, and that had to have hurt more than anything. Tony remembers the way he’d felt finding out Steve knew about the Winter Soldier’s role in his parent’s deaths, remembers the sharp sting of betrayal years back when Obadiah Stane had tried to murder him. He knows what that feels like and he wishes she didn’t have to go through it.

 

“She made her choice,” Shuri finally says, her voice firm. She won’t talk of it again, so he drops it and they eat in silence for a long while, until his plate is done and she’s asking for seconds. She rubs her tummy and reaches out to hold his hand and he lets her, lets the warmth of her skin seep into his very soul. He has a feeling he’s going to need it within the next few days.

 

He spends another week solid in Wakanda, soaking up the late summer sun and putting off the inevitable, until he realizes he’ll never get to move forward if he doesn’t do something now. He hasn’t seen Steve Rogers since that night and part of him hopes he never has to see him again. Shuri says something about him taking off to find Natasha in Europe and Tony knows that by this time next week, Natasha Romanoff will hate him, too.

 

Everyone will, by the end of all this.

 

But what was the end? He didn’t know.

 

He doesn’t bother packing to head back to New York. He has a feeling he’ll have to come back here because he won’t be welcomed anywhere else. There’s a knock on his door right before he slips on his jacket and he opens it, presses his lips together to find the Queen Mother waiting for him. This time, she’s alone.

 

He says nothing when he lets her inside, simply moves out her way and she sweeps past him to his window and waits for him to catch up to her.

 

“I need to know your intentions, Mr. Stark.”

 

Tony swallows. He doesn’t know. “I’ve got...I have to tell her. My wife. I um...she needs to know.”

 

Ramonda nods. “She does. And whatever choice she makes concerning you, you deserve that.” He can’t disagree with that, though it does nothing at all to make him feel any less nervous or helpless. He wants to curl up into a ball and disappear.

 

“That’s not what you meant, is it?”

 

She shakes her head, elegance and authority oozing from every pore and he thinks again of how utterly beautiful and bewitching she is. He’s no stranger to attractive women, but Ramonda pushes the boundaries between attraction and absolute enchantment. He thinks that if this is Shuri’s future, he’ll never stand a chance. He’s already her dog; he’ll be her fool forever.

 

“When you inevitably tell your wife about the affair you’d carried on with my daughter, what do you plan to do then? I know you have a son to care for. Will you abandon him to live as Shuri’s lover? Will you allow her to embarrass herself and claim you as father of her child?”

 

He frowns, the sting of her words striking him to his core. “What else should I do? Be one of those assholes who pretend like the girl they got pregnant doesn’t exist? Pretend the kid isn’t mine?”

 

Ramonda shrugs. “You’re already an asshole, Mr. Stark. But you’ve fathered my first grandchild so I suppose you think you have some sort of privilege here.”

 

He blinks and gathers his thoughts for a moment, the tone of her words banking absolutely no room to argue otherwise. So he doesn’t. He simply waits for her to continue, though anger and shame stew inside him violently.

 

“The truth of the matter is this: my daughter is under no obligation to prove who her child’s father is, and for the good of her crown, she won’t. I’ve advised her not to. If you want to claim the child as yours in private, feel free. I suppose it will be hard to keep the resemblance under wraps as she grows, anyway.”

 

“You want me to stay out the way.”

 

“You’re smarter than I gave you credit for. Still not very bright, but not a complete loss.”

 

“Thank you, your Majesty,” he says, bitter and sharp, a smile on his mouth that felt so wrong and yet, so right. “I’m honored.”

 

She says nothing else to that but when she turns to leave him, her little smirk is almost amused, and he thinks that if she didn’t dislike him so much, she’d probably maybe like him a little. He knows he’d like her. He thinks he maybe already does, insults notwithstanding. Then again, they’re not just insults when they’re simple truths.

 

“I wish you good luck on your...delicate endeavor,” Ramonda says, and she’s gone, leaving him flushed and aching and sore.

 

* * *

 

Pepper is in the kitchen when he lands home. He’s tired, a straight shot flight from the Wakandan capitol to the compound where he’d practiced over and over how he was going to say this, how he was going to do this. He still doesn’t know.

 

And then, when she looks up, he thinks that she probably already knows because her eyes are searching him as if she’s never seen him before and there’s a thrum of anger in her hands. Jude is nowhere to be seen. He guesses it’s nap time. Tony lets the suit slip back and he moves across the kitchen the fridge for something, anything to do that doesn’t involve looking at his wife.

 

“How was your trip?” she finally asks. Her voice is dry, empty.

 

She knows. He has no idea how she knows, maybe Bruce had told, maybe Steve or Natasha. Maybe she’d seen the pictures, too, and god, that makes him nauseous. He closes his eyes and draws in a breath, his heart breaking already.

 

“She says...she’s um...she says she’s sorry.”

 

Pepper is quiet for a very long moment and it’s only because of how quiet she is does he hear the whistle of the cutting block soaring at his head as she chunks it his way. And then she starts to cry, a scream in her throat as she picks up anything she can (a pot, a plant, dishes, cups, and several knives) and hurls them his way.

 

“Why?!”

 

“Pep...just-”

 

“Why?! I thought you loved me. I thought…” She wails and her face screws up painfully and this time he doesn’t duck the plate she throws at him, lets it hit him right in the face, right under his eye where Steve had drawn blood a week ago. It hurts but not as much as watching her break down like this does.

 

“I’m sorry.” He swallows back his tears because to cry in front of her like this would be so fucking insulting. “I’m so, so sorry, Pepper, please I...I can’t…”

 

He can’t excuse it. He has no excuse at all.

 

“Tell me,” she says, wiping her eyes and she sits down again, her lip wobbling. “I want to know it all.”

 

He opens his mouth and almost protests, but he owes her this. And when he does, leaving nothing out, telling her all about the affair and how it had started, she weeps silently, her face in her hands.

 

“I wasn’t good enough, was I?”

 

“No...no that’s not it, no.”

 

She sniffles and laughs bitterly. “I’m not young enough or pretty enough. And I was fat and pregnant and who wants a crabby, restless old woman when they could have someone young and pretty like her?” Pepper’s head falls back and she starts to sob again. Tony doesn’t move to touch her, standing in a limbo between the fridge and the island. Blood drips down his cheek from where she’d hit him with the plate but he lets it. “God, I’m such an idiot. I should have said no.”

 

“Pep.”

 

“Don’t call me that!” she screeches, glaring at him so hard he thinks he’s died twice just from the stare alone. He wishes she’d just go head and toss another one of those knives at him and get it over with. “What is it with men and their mid life crisis? I’m already younger than you, asshole. But not quite young enough, huh? Went for someone young enough to be your daughter because she’s easier. She’s pliable. Probably more flexible than I am.” Pepper laughs again and Tony thinks maybe she’s lost her mind.

 

“That wasn’t what it was.”

 

“Then what was it?” Pepper wipes her face once more and her jaw clenches. “Don’t tell me it was just sex.”

 

When he shakes his head she sighs and shrugs and she falls quiet again, and he keeps his stare at the broken plates on the floor. Mentally, he plays a game of putting the plates back together again, but he knew even with the best glue, you could still see the cracks. And the longer he stares, the quieter it is, the more painful.

 

“She doesn’t love you.”

 

Pepper’s voice still shakes, but there’s a surety and power behind it that Tony knows means she’s not going to bend. She won’t forgive him for this. Not this time, she’s done. And as much as that hurts, as badly as he wants to go back and redo this, he knows he can’t and that he deserves this.

 

“I know.”

 

He does. Shuri doesn’t love him, and he’s always known it. She maybe likes him, since she’s been so sweet lately, but love? Nah. And yet, the selfish and arrogant part of him had thought that maybe, just maybe, if he made her laugh hard enough, if he spoiled and pampered her enough, if he made her cum enough times and hard enough, she’d fall for him. But she hasn’t and he can’t see a real reason why she would. She’s chasing the ghost of a man lost to ashes and he’ll never live up to that.

 

“She’ll never love you the way I do. No one will.”

 

Pepper wipes her face and holds her head high and the breath she takes feels so final. Cold sweat drips down Tony’s spine when she walks to him and he braces for a slap to the face, a punch, anything. But her stare is worse than the beatdown Steve had given him; he could handle having his face pummeled by Captain America far more than he could handle his wife’s red rimmed, angry eyes.

 

“Go to her, then.” It’s said in the voice of a woman who has cut her losses and already knows what to do to rebuild herself so Tony doesn’t say a word back. He turns around and heads for the bedroom, packs a few changes of clothes in his duffle and stares at the knick knacks on the nightstand one last time. It’ll all be gone by the time he returns, he knows, if he returns. And he knows he probably won’t, at least not permanently. He’ll dip in and out to visit his son, if Pepper wills it, and he’ll linger in the limbo between two worlds, between what he’d soiled and damaged and what he’d been chasing like a fool.

 

He can feel tears swell up in his chest again and he doesn’t even fight them this time. He lets them fall, his head down as he slides past Pepper to the nursery. He picks his son up and holds him close, the boy’s soft cheek pressed against the heated flushed skin of his throat.

 

“I love you,” he whispers, choking down a sob so he doesn’t wake the baby. “I love you so much and I’m sorry. I’m sorry, I…” He shakes his head and slides a thumb over the smooth white cheek, tucks Jude back into his bed and blinks until the tears clear from his eyes.

 

And without another word, he grabs his bag and heads out the door, his heart heavy and his chest tight as he leaves the house.

 

* * *

 

He takes the quinjet and not his suit because he needs time. He isn’t even sure what he needs time for, maybe crying like a broken hearted fool, but why should he? Everything that had gone to shit was his fault. And he should accept that, save his tears for something out of his control.

 

All of this could have been avoided if he’d actually thought, for once, with his head and not with his dick or his treacherous, worthless heart.

 

He passes the hours between New York and Birnin Zana in and out of a nap until his phone lit up halfway across the ocean and wouldn’t stop ringing. Shuri’s number flashed across the screen and he held his breath before he answered, his voice cracking with pain and exhaustion.

 

“Hello.”

 

There were deep breaths on the end and then a soft groan and he knew, right then, that it was time.

 

“I don’t imagine she’ll be here yet when you arrive, if you can make it,” Shuri finally says, no greeting, right to the point. She sounds strained, no doubt from the contractions and he thinks to when Jude was born, to Pepper’s flushed but excited face as she waited for him on the couch after he landed home. That had been the night of the coup, a night of upheaval and unrest. It’s a little bit of a parallel that his son had been born when he’d left one woman he loved. And now his daughter, it seemed, would be born the same way. There’s upheaval here, too, though this upheaval rests inside him and rips his heart apart.

 

“I’m already on my way,” he tells her, and she laughs, as if she disbelieves. But he doesn’t join her and she sobers shortly after.

 

“You told her?”

 

“Yeah.”

 

There’s silence on the other end and then more deep breaths and Tony almost asks if she’s alright. Of course she isn’t. She’s about to have a baby.

 

(She’s still a baby, his baby. She’s so young. She’s so tiny and he’s scared something could happen and he knows she’s safe there, he knows she’d have the best chance but what if...what if? He can’t think of that, he can’t.)

 

“I’ll tell them to get your room ready, then. Hurry, Tony. I want to know you’re near.”

 

Shuri’s still in labor when he lands. Two Dora escort him from the quinjet to the palace, to a darkened room deep within the confines of the Wakandan royal residence. She’ll give birth to her child (his child, their child) surrounded by those who know her best; her mother and Nakia and the general, no doubt; female cousins and advisors, the same midwife who had helped deliver both T’Challa and herself. It’s a sacred occasion and it’s only because she wants him here is he even in the same vicinity. The idea that he won’t be there to actually witness the birth of the baby rankles, but he knows he has no right to complain. So he sits where he’s told and he waits and he listens, to her shrill cries and the chanting birth song being sung as she bears down and pushes.

 

It lasts for hours more. And then, there is a cry that makes him clench his fingers into his jeans and sit up at attention. Tony stares at the door for long minutes more, the time nearly stretching into an hour and then some, until the door cracks open and wordlessly, one of the Dora Milaje instructs him to come inside.

 

He’s not sure why he’s so nervous, except that maybe this feels like a trap, like he’s walking to his death. Perhaps this first glimpse of his second child will be his last; they’ll drag him from the birthing room and out to the river and drown him there, toss his body over the waterfalls so that no one ever finds him.

 

He honestly doesn’t think he’d fight it. He most definitely deserves it. But his thoughts are interrupted by Shuri’s hoarse, strained voice. She calls to him and blindly, he wanders into the warm, dark room, pulled forward by an invisible thread that guides him to her.

 

“Come see,” she says, her command softened only by the tired smile on her face. He steps forward on legs so wobbly he feels like a baby deer, but somehow he manages to stumble over to her great big bed and he stops just short of where she sits, propped up by pillows and holding a bundle proudly. His chest clenches at the almost deja vu; his stomach lurches at what he’s done, not just to Pepper but to his girl queen, to the baby she holds.

 

“Come meet your daughter, Anthony.”

 

He can’t resist when she calls him that, not that way. He tries ignoring the queen mother’s searing glare, or Okoye’s disapproving eyes to focus on the baby Shuri holds out to him. And the moment she places it in his arms, he finds his vision focused only on the little face nestled in the bright purple and red blanket.

 

She’s as beautiful as he imagined she would be.

 

There’s some poetic parallel to the fact that he has a son and now a daughter, so different but somehow, alike. His boy is as pale as milk and blue eyed, little freckles sprinkled over his nose and a soft tuff of silky brown hair. But his girl, the baby he holds, is the soft caramel of warm sugar. Her hair is thick and black, curled tight against her little head, and her eyes, that flicker open and shut as she yawns in his arms, the exact same color of his own.

 

She has his eyes, his mother’s eyes. She has his mouth. She is his, this baby princess.

 

“I haven’t settled on what to name her just yet,” Shuri says, shifting on the bed and wincing a bit. Tony looks up at the beautiful woman who’d birthed him this miracle and blinks stupidly in the dim lighting of the birth room. “Though I do have some idea.”

 

“Something befitting a princess,” he quips, and she smiles.

 

“But of course. And something to honor her father, as well.” There’s a pause as Shuri thinks of a name for their daughter, no doubt Wakandan in nature and as beautiful as the girl it’ll be given to. But all Tony can think of as he looks at this child is _Maria_ and he toys with the idea of telling the queen of Wakanda he wants to name his daughter after his mother.

 

“Thandiwe,” Shuri mentions, soft enough that no one but he and her mother and Okoye can hear. It’s the first time that he’s seen the face of the general soften into something less severe, and for just a second, Ramonda almost smiles. “Thandiwe Maria.”

 

He mulls over the name in his head before saying it aloud, the words sweet on his tongue and a prayer in his mouth, and he smiles, though his hands still tremble as he gazes down at his Thandiwe Maria.

 

* * *

 

Thandiwe is more her father’s daughter than Tony had ever thought possible. She takes to him almost instantly, in the quiet moments he’s allowed to hold her, to rock and sing to her. He spends long hours simply breathing in the scent of her, his fingers sliding through the curls on top her head. Shuri recovers quickly and within weeks is back on the throne, splitting her time between council meetings and her newborn daughter.

 

And no one outside of a select few knows the child belongs to Tony Stark.

 

Much to his surprise, Steve takes the heat of the gossip. They all assume the queen had started a romance with the Captain, their closeness in the months of her pregnancy and Steve’s apparent loyalty and affection for Shuri all the evidence they need. And tho he’d told Shuri he’d claim the girl as his, he knows it’ll be easier to let it go. The Wakandan public like Steve, and probably think nothing of him. He owes the man so much for that, more than he’ll ever be able to give and though Steve still gives him a wide berth (the way everyone else seems to), he never bothers to correct anyone’s assumption. It’s probably more so out of dedication to Shuri than anything, but Tony will take it.

 

No one suspects the blood that flows through the baby princess’ veins belongs to the man that hovers about the laboratory, who works into the wee hours of the morning and keeps out of the eyes of the prying public. They all seem to think he is only Shuri’s little assistant, her lackey, her dutiful workhorse and he’s happy to live up their assumptions. It gives him time away from anyone and everyone but his daughter and, on occasion, Bruce or Jane.

 

Shuri doesn’t have the time and Pepper won’t answer the phone, so the baby is all he really has.

 

He falls more and more in love with his little Thandi the more he’s allowed to hold her. At first, it’s under the supervision of the Dora or Shuri herself, other times, only in the presence of Ramonda or Okoye. And then one day, Nakia comes with the girl strapped to her chest and she shoots him a soft smile, one he hasn’t ever seen, and when he reaches out his arms, the baby is lain there so that he can cradle her and hold her tightly.

 

And much to his surprise, he’s left alone.

 

Thandi is awake, her bright hazel eyes staring here and there until they focus on what is probably just a blob in actuality, but she somehow knows instinctively is her father. He hasn’t decided if she’ll call him Baba or Daddy just yet; he figures he could come up with a nice little compromise, the way Shuri had with her name.

 

“Hey sweetie pie,” he says, smiling as she blinks slowly and settles her eyes on his face. Her smile is something slow and sweet and it clenches at his heart so tightly he can’t breathe. He’d die for this girl, the same as he would for his boy back home. It’s the same feeling, the same fear and love and anxiety he’d felt the first time he’d picked up Jude and stared into those bright blue eyes. He thinks then that maybe this is the only love he needs, the love for his children, and he starts to sing a little Patsy Cline, getting louder when Thandi begins to coo.

 

“I need to ask your uncle Bruce to bring my old cds next time he goes home,” he says, by way of conversation. “Lots of good stuff in there. I wonder if you’d like metal. Your brother doesn’t. He seems partial to Motown for whatever reason.” Tony grins and leans forward to brush his lips against her head. “Probably been hanging out with uncle Rhodey too much. Speaking of which, you’ve gotta meet him. You’ll love him, Thandi. He’s the best.”

 

He doesn’t mention that Rhodey has barely said a word to him since finding out about the affair. He doesn’t say anything about meeting Jude, either, because he’s almost certain it won’t happen. At least not anytime soon, it won’t, and there’s a pang in his chest at the thought that is his fault. It’s almost a double edged sword; if he hadn’t been unfaithful, he wouldn’t have his baby girl. So perhaps none of that would have mattered anyway. He pushes the thought aside and dances around the lab, Thandi tucked safely in her wrap and in his arms, as he sings along to the Roy Orbison that plays.

 

It goes like this for a while, until his motivation for getting out of bed is less about fixing the past and more about seeing his daughter. He finds he spends most of his time curled up at the great big windows with her there, and he takes to spending his nights in the lab, looking forward to the footsteps that announce one of the Dora or Nakia have arrived with the baby girl.

 

And then one day, when Thandiwe is three months old, Shuri arrives alone.

 

Tony is dressing when she comes in, his shirt half on and his pants still unbuttoned. He’d woken up late, actually motivated to do something about the near finished time machine for once the night before after the Dora had come to take Thandi back to her mother. Tony felt like he was running out of time for some reason, that his progress depended on doing this right now instead of pacing himself and doing it later.

 

He stares at the queen with mussed hair and sleepy eyes, his body holding taut and still as she takes her time ascending the stairs. She says nothing initially, simply eyes him and then the work he’d done, her fingertips grazing over the holo that holds schematics for the machine. After a moment of observation she turns her gaze to him and there’s an odd fondness there that he wasn’t expecting.

 

It gives him hope and he doesn’t like it. He shouldn’t be hoping for anything, not with what he’s done.

 

“They’re not bringing Than Than today?”

 

“Later. Umama wanted to spend a little time with her this morning. I told them to bring her by after lunch.”

 

“Ah. Okay. Cool.”

 

Shuri snorts and Tony almost smiles. “I know how you are about her,” she says. “You can’t go a day without holding her at least once.”

 

“What can I say. She’s got me wrapped around her little finger.” _Just like her mama_ , he almost adds but he doesn’t. He has no idea where they stand right now. She turns her attention back to the machine, the window of opportunity to ask silently for more passing swiftly.

 

“You’ve done well,” she says softly, a smile coming to her lips and he hates how his heart thumps when she looks at him like that. He hates that his body reacts, too, as he sweeps his eyes quickly from the crown of her head to the tips of her toes, baby fat still clinging to her body softly and creating curves that hadn’t been there before. He wonders if she feels any different now that she’s borne a child. He doesn’t think it’s his place to ask, so he doesn’t.

 

“I did what I could,” he says truthfully, because that’s all he could do. He could never think to challenge her genius, has nothing worthwhile to really contribute except for following sloppily along in her footsteps and copying her codes. But it’s something, he guesses. It’s better than nothing at all. After all this time and he still doesn’t resent that she’s so much more than he’d ever be. He knows it’s why he loves her, that, and she doesn’t stand for any of his bullshit.

 

Pepper hadn’t either, but that hadn’t ended up in a good place. He had no clue if he’d be a single divorced man soon or not; there was radio silence on that end and had been since he’d left.

 

“Which is more than enough,” she says, moving to where he’s still stands awkwardly, half dressed and unpolished. She looks up at him and tilts her head and he holds his breath when she reaches up and tries to smooth out his hair. It’s a hopeless endeavor. He needs more than her fingers and pretty scowl to fix that mess, but he keeps his head lowered and doesn’t say a word otherwise. She hasn’t touched him since before Thandi was born and this is more than he had ever anticipated. He closes his eyes for a moment to relish the feeling of her nails in his scalp, opening them once more to stare at her concentrated face and memorize every inch of her skin.

 

“A lost cause,” she finally grumbles, rolling her eyes and sighing. But she doesn’t move her hands, nor does she back away from him. Instead, she tugs him close and keeps her hands in his hair and she watches him, quietly, for a long moment until finally she leans up on tip toe and kisses him soundly.

 

It’s like taking the first cool drink after days in the desert and he leans into it eagerly, slipping his hand around her waist and pulling her flush against him. He can feel her skin prickle where his fingers brush against bare flesh and he groans into her mouth, pushing his hips into her belly as she bites down on his bottom lip. His body comes alive for the first time in months, his every nerve on end as the feel and smell and taste of her comes back to him in a rush. When his mouth leaves her lips and trails down her jaw to her chin, she moans into his ear and for a moment, Tony thinks to take her right now, right on the floor of the lab with his pants still undone and her skirt rucked up her hips. But she pulls away, grasping strands of his hair tight so that he stops nibbling on the skin of her throat.

 

“I did not come here for you to ravish me, Tony,” she breathes, but there’s humor to her voice and he is relieved she isn’t angry with him. He still remembers the fire in her eyes when he left the night before his anniversary, still remembers her claws digging into his shoulders as they fucked in her bedroom right before he took off. A little mental math shoots him backward to a little over a year and he convinces himself that night had been when Thandi was conceived.

 

“What did you come here for then, your Majesty?” he asks, wiping his mouth but keeping her close. “I’m used to your sister in law or one of your bodyguards coming over for a quick chat. You know, when they plop Than Than in my lap and we crank up the show tunes-“

 

“Tony.”

 

“She’s really into _Hello Dolly_. Don’t tell anyone else I listen to theater music, please.”

 

She laughs then and shakes her head. Shuri pulls back from him but he keeps her in place with a firm grip of his hand. The look she shoots him is a warning, but it’s a weak one and Tony knows this is his power over her, this little shred of power, the dominance he doesn’t feel anywhere else except when he’s between her thighs and she’s begging him to cum.

 

God, he misses that.

 

“I came here because Jane’s figured out what went wrong last time and she’ll be arriving this afternoon for testing. I’ve got the fixed code with me.”

 

Tony nods and pushes her over toward one of the work stations, finally zipping his pants and he starts the coffee maker beside the computer. She glances at it, then him, and raises a brow.

 

“Where’d you get a coffee machine?” she asks, tapping the screen of the computer and typing in her pass code.

 

He smiles proudly. “I built it.”

 

Per usual, she doesn’t look even remotely impressed. “And why are you putting liquids anywhere near my systems?” She says it like he should know better because he should. Tony grins and leans over her, grabbing a half empty mug from underneath the desk and he chugs down leftover coffee with a grimace before sliding the cup under the machine in order to get a fresh spot.

 

“I’ve been doing this longer than you’ve been alive. Your systems will be just fine.”

 

“Still the same, then,” she says wryly, pulling up files and spreading them holographically above their heads. “You just love pulling the little bit of rank you have over me, don’t you?”

 

“You love it when I do, though,” he responds, leaning down to get a quick kiss in on her neck. She scoots out the way and leaves him hanging, her face serious and tight and Tony wonders where exactly he’s misunderstood her.

 

“Not here. I told you that.”

 

He holds up his hands and backs away, lead in the pit of his belly once more and his almost sort of good mood shot to shit. But that was his fault too, so he tries hard not to hold it against her. Instead, he focuses on what she’s saying and tries to forget all about how badly he wants her, or how his heart hurts when she doesn’t reach out and touch him.

 

He hates how much in love with her he is because she doesn’t love him at all.

 

On the surface, Jane’s adjustment doesn’t seem to change much but he knows that the little switch in numbers will make all the difference. All they need now are a few tests and a bit of luck and they’ll have everything set. And something inside him is almost dreading this, an end to a long journey that has broken his heart and soldered it back together to do it over and over again. In the back of his mind he knows that this won’t end up quite the way he wants it to.

 

“You’re drifting, Tony.”

 

Shuri’s voice comes back to him as his mind tries desperately to recall what she’d been saying, but it’s no use. He’s missed the last minute or so and he sighs apologetically.

 

“Sorry. Lot on my brain.”

 

“Same. We’re all set either way.” She pushes back from the desk and takes the mug of coffee that still sat underneath the machine as she stands. One sip has her wrinkling her nose, but she drinks anyway, then hands him all of what’s left when she has her fill. And he puts his mouth right where hers was, sips the lukewarm coffee with his eyes on hers, watching her reaction when his tongue darts out to trace the rim of the mug.

 

And just like he thought, she rolls her eyes, though he sees the beginnings of desire stir in them.

 

“Why are you like this?” she asks in that longsuffering voice she uses when he’s getting his way and she doesn’t like it.

 

“Like _what_ , your Majesty?” he purrs, crowding her space once more and this time she doesn’t pull back or push him away. She stands still and lifts her chin to narrow her eyes at him, arms crossed in front of her defensively. It’s all for show, because the moment he hears her suck in a breath as his hands cage her in against the desk, he knows she’s his.

 

At least for right now, she is, at least for this moment. He can’t say what will happen tomorrow, or in the next few days. But he doesn’t dwell too long on tomorrow because she parts her knees just barely and gives him the signal so that he pushes between them and presses a thigh between her legs, grinning when she whimpers out his name.

 

“I thought I said not here,” she whispers, her hands sliding along his shoulders to wrap around him.

 

“Doesn’t have to be here,” he says, nipping at her chin and letting his voice deepen and rumble in his chest the way she likes it to. “Wherever you want, pretty baby,” he purrs, and he knows she’s gone now, by the way her breathing hitches, the way her fingers grasp at his neck, the way her whole body folds into his. She’s still got enough sense to blink lust blown eyes and tug his head back so he looks her dead in the eye.

 

“We don’t have time to go anywhere else,” she says through gritted teeth. Tony slips a hand underneath her crisp twill skirt and hums in delight to find her soaked through her underwear. She whines when his fingers tug the panties aside and stroke through her slick lips to push against her clit. “You did this on purpose.”

 

“Maybe.”

 

“Fuck you,” she hisses.

 

“If you ask nicely, I’ll let you,” he retorts, his fingers circling her entrance slowly. He remembers it’s been only three months since she’s given birth and he doesn’t want to hurt her. He only wants her to remember. When he pulls his hand away, she shudders at the loss.

 

He picks her up and carries her, thighs locked around his middle, to the little cot he calls a bed nestled between the window and the wall. One hand braces against the haphazard sheets as he lays her down, the other steadies her as she slides from his arms and then pulls him down to nestle on top of her. She arches into his touch, his kiss, her ankles sliding up his sides and pulling up his shirt along with it, and distantly he thinks of how he could have stayed undressed if he knew it would come to this.

 

She starts working on her skirt but he stops her with a swift, firm hand, tugging her other up to the head of the cot and locking them there tight. Shuri’s eyes widen, and then glaze over at the insinuation in his grip. He’s in control from here on, and she’s more than willing to give him that.

 

“Same word as last time?” he asks, momentarily putting the ball back in her court. She’s got five seconds to come up with an answer or he’ll choose for her, and until she cums, until she’s screeching out _Daddy_ in that high pitched voice of hers he loves, she is his to do with as he pleases.

 

Just like it had been before, just like old times.

 

“Mmhm. Domino.”

 

It’s a quarter till 10 and Jane’s not due till almost 3; plenty of time, he thinks, to get back in the swing of things. Tony shoots her a glare that explicitly tells her not to move her hands and she obeys, licking her lips when he pops the buttons of her skirt one by one. He presses one hand to her belly and wiggles the skirt past her hips, salivating at how snug it is, the excess weight she still wore stretching the twill almost obscenely across her body. It’s at least a size too small and he grins when her panties catch on the skirt’s descend down her legs.

 

“God, you look so good, Kitten. I put a baby in you and you filled out so well.” He leans down to bite the dip between her hips and her waist, laughing breathlessly across her skin when she jerks and whimpers at the contact. “You gotta stop wiggling. Daddy can’t get a taste of you when you’re moving around so much.”

 

“I’m sorry, Daddy,” she says softly, and he groans as her accent catches on the last syllable. “I just want you so bad right now.”

 

“Patience is a virtue,” he tells her sweetly, and in the flash of a second, he rips her simple cotton panties from her body, tossing them to the side to use later. He doesn’t think it possible, but she looks even more turned on and he wastes no time pushing his fingers inside her, gently of course, still a little hesitant to take her too roughly.

 

“Does it hurt, baby girl?”

 

She shakes her head no and clenches lightly around his fingers. She’s already so worked up, he doesn’t think it’ll take much to make her cum. But he wants to hear her sweet voice, so he slaps her clit and keeps his gaze firm when she cries out. “Use your words.”

 

Shuri sucks in a sharp breath, her hips trying to push forward though she doesn’t have permission. It only takes one more slap before she screeches and pants out a weak no. It’s not enough for Tony. He’s got to know she means it. He twists his fingers up so they curl inside her and he pushes against her spot, hard, giving her strict orders not to move.

 

“I didn’t hear you, baby. You know Daddy’s hearing isn’t what it used to be. Louder.” Brown eyes blink and dart from his face to the ceiling and back again. The feeling inside her has to be incredible and he keeps the pressure he has on her spot constant.

 

“No!” she responds, moaning as his thumb comes down to start hard circles on her clit. He rewards her by pushing his fingers in and out faster, increasing the friction while she lies helpless and struggles not to move. She’s so gorgeous like this, fighting against her natural urge to take so she can be taken. “No, no I’m…it doesn’t hurt, it doesn’t-“

 

“What do you want, then?”

 

She keens again, and he knows she’s close to cumming already, so he slows his hand, raising a brow when she dares to whine about it. He lets that go, simply because he really wants to eat her like the last supper and if he punishes her for every little transgression, it’ll set him back on getting where he really wants to be.

 

“I want to move,” she breathes. “I wanna move so badly, please.”

 

One nod of his head and then she’s pushing her heels into the cot and her hips into his hand. He grins, kisses a trail from her quivering belly up to her breast bone, then over to her breasts, full and heavy with milk. Part of him is curious to taste it, but he refrains for the time being, content just to circle her nipples with his tongue as she actively fucks his hand. When he shoots his eyes up to look at her, she’s got her eyes screwed shut and her hands clenched in the thin sheet, mouth open as the sweetest little sounds come pouring out. He thinks he might just get off from the sight of this, but he reigns it in, adds another finger and nibbles on the skin of her collarbone. And when he feels her body start to curl in, he pushes faster until she’s gushing around him, head bowed onto his shoulder as she cums.

 

She falls back onto the pallet with a gasping sigh, and he kisses the line of her neck as she catches her breath. Hard as he is, he’d be content to just lay with her like this, knowing he’s pleasured her, but she has other ideas.

 

She whimpers when he moves away and pulls him close again, catching his mouth in a kiss and holding him fast. Her legs wrap around his waist and her hands drag up his shirt, pulls it off and she tosses it over to the side. “That wasn’t it, was it?” she breathes out, a challenge in her eyes. He growls and kisses her again, hard and hot and wet and slips his pants down till they pool around his ankles. He doesn’t give a fuck about taking them off because her thighs are pressed around his sides and she’s reaching down to grasp his dick, stroking it hard and quick, gauging how ready he is to have her.

 

He’s been ready since she walked in that morning.

 

“Not by a long shot,” he finally replies, and he wastes no time, sinking deep inside her with a groan so ragged he almost doesn’t recognize that it’d come from himself. He thinks he shakes, when he lifts onto his arms and starts a slow, hard rhythm, but he pays it no mind. She doesn’t either, if her wide eyes and opened mouth and gasping pants are any indication. And he forgets all about roleplaying, about Daddy and Kitten because right now, all he wants is Shuri and all he wants is to be Tony, just Tony.

 

He kisses her slowly, in time with his thrusts, and lifts her thighs when she whines for more and harder. But he refuses to go any faster. He wants this to drag out as long as possible. He fucks her like he’s unsure if he ever will again, as if this was all she’d ever be willing to give him after today. One farewell parting fuck before she went back to her lofty life of Queen and mother and the shining jewel of the African continent.

  

Her fingers dig into his scalp when he pushes down on her belly to keep her from moving so much. She can’t seem to just receive him and be content. She needs to forcefully take, and he knows if she doesn’t quit moving like that and clenching and whispering his name all hot and heavy, he’ll cum before she does and then he’ll never live that down. But it’s been so long since he’s had a taste of her and right now he’s got a full meal. He bows his head and wraps his arms around her body and presses his hips into her harder until she’s nearly crying out in pleasure and probably, he thinks, pain.

 

If it hurts, he’s sorry, but only a little. Pain is the price he pays to love her so much, so this is her price to have every inch of him at her disposal. And either way, she never tells him to stop or slow down. She breathes in little shuddering breaths and holds him close and meets his eyes as hers blink back tears and she arches beneath him as she starts to cum again.

 

 _Fall_ _apart_ , he thinks, as he grasps her hip to keep himself steady. _Go_ _ahead_ _and_ _fall_ _apart_ , _count_ _to_ _ten_ , _then_ _we’ll_ _do_ _it_ _all_ _over_ _again_.

 

And again, and again, until he’s a sweaty wreck between her thighs, her hands pressed to his chest as she rides him and he’s going to lose his mind if she doesn’t let him finally get his release.

 

“Please, pretty baby”, he moans out, and he lifts his hips desperately, as if he could sink any further inside her. He’s balls deep and she’s so wet, so tight and good but god, he wishes he could get even closer. He wishes he were apart of her, another extension of her skin, just a phantom limb of hers. He wishes he were her, sometimes, and no time like right now does he wish so badly he could make her do what he wanted.

 

She grins and lets her head fall back, but her control over him starts to slip as one more orgasm begins to thrum between her legs, so he takes the opportunity to sit up and hold her close, kiss her like she’s good wine and he’s an addict, and move his body anyway he can so that the pleasure that curls at the base of his spine ratchets up higher and twists harder and then she snaps, screams out something like his name and he cums then too, his hands digging into the flesh of her shoulders and at the curve of her ass until he knows she’ll have bruises on both.

 

His mark, his bruises. He’s hers, but she’s his, too, no matter what she says. His. _All his._

 

* * *

 

Jane and Bruce come to the lab right at 2:45, a little early, but by this point it doesn’t matter how they see the two of them. Thandi’s nannies had brought her over right after lunch and the three of them had settled over by the big windows that overlooked the city, sandwiches and soup between Shuri and Tony and a breast for Thandi when she started to fuss.

 

Tony watched unashamed, smoothing back his daughter’s curls as she nursed, and kissing Shuri’s neck. Sunlight streamed in beautiful and bright and for just those few hours, the three of them, a family, he could pretend that this was right and nothing wrong had ever happened. He could pretend. He could hope and wish.

 

Half his heart still lay in New York with his blue eyed boy, but the other half rested in his arms and sucked noisily at her mother’s breast and Tony hadn’t been so whole in so very long.

 

It was Bruce who broke the silence in the lab. Shuri had taken the opportunity to fire up her systems and get the holos open and spread out across the room. Tony nuzzled Thandi and sang to her softly so she’d fall asleep. It was past time for her nap, but baby girl was fighting it so hard. He caught Bruce’s eye when he turned, after Shuri greeted the two softly, and though he didn’t want to hope, he thought he saw some sort of understanding in the man’s eyes.

 

Maybe not forgiveness just yet, but understanding. And that would suffice.

 

“How far have we gotten on the rebuild?” Jane asks.

 

“All done, except for some final wiring on the panel," Tony tells her. Jane pauses for just a moment to brush her fingers over Thandi’s little cheeks, and her smile spread when the baby sighed a bit, then snuggled down further into her father’s chest.

 

“Sleepy baby,” Jane whispers, and leaned over to kiss Thandi’s brow. “Go to sleep, pretty girl, it’s good for you.”

 

“Please tell her that more often,” Shuri says with a laugh. “She refuses to just settle down and sleep like normal children.”

 

“Got too much to see, I guess,” Bruce comments, his hands in his pockets as if he isn’t sure where to put them. He hasn’t even held the girl yet, Tony remembers, and he watches him for a moment, gauging whether he’d want to or not. There’s a lot of tension in his shoulders, in the line of how he stands, so Tony walks over to his friend and shifts the drowsy baby over to Bruce silently.

 

“You mean I can-”

 

“Duh, doofus. All you had to do was come grab her, seriously.”

 

Bruce swallows and glances to Shuri for confirmation, but the queen is working with Jane on the final formulations for the machine so she doesn’t pay him any mind. And so Bruce reaches out and takes the child, holding his breath, Tony notices, when the little eyes pop open to see who’s got her now. There’s a moment where Thandi’s hazel meets Bruce’s brown and neither of them move or react, but then Thandi smiles, then yawns, and snuggles into Bruce’s chest and Tony knows he’s as gone as the rest of them.

 

“Oh,” is all he says, and he sits down at the chair closest to him, strokes the baby’s back and rocks her back and forth until she’s breathing steady and fast asleep.

 

Tony thinks his heart could burst, it’s so full. He still remembers when he'd told him over the phone that surprise, Shuri had been pregnant too and oh look, he had a daughter now. That had been a fun conversation. Not.

 

“Are you gonna watch Bruce babysit, or are you gonna come over and help us with this?” Jane asks, a twinkle in her eye. Shuri tries hard not to smile, but can’t help it, and she makes room between the two of them for Tony. He slips a palm over her hand for just a second and she draws in a breath, only so he can hear, but he can feel her shift closer, minutely, and he knows then.

 

She’s his. Nobody else ever needs to know, but she is. She’s his.

 

“Alright. First test of the Slingshot 2.0 begins in ten minutes.” Shuri straightens and glances to the scientists in the room and then to her baby daughter and catches Tony’s eye in the mid afternoon light. “Who’s going to be our first tester?”

 


	5. for we are sinners all

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the first half of the original fifth chapter which prompted me to reorganize the story. The second half should be up within a few days. Thanks for reading!

One day, if he survives this, he’s going to write a textbook on the effects of time travel on the human body, co-written by Bruce, no doubt with a forward by Jane.

 

It’s been only a week since they’ve gotten every little detail on the machine down to a science, enough that he can scoot back not only hours but weeks and then, by the third day of their human tests, an actual full year. It’s eerie to be back in the lab a year before, though the place was empty of anyone, as they’d aimed for the dead of the night to keep the chances of him running into his past self to a minimum. He hadn’t had to tell Shuri that there would be no reason to believe he wouldn’t be in the lab that night. That’d been the night before he’d left Wakanda, and he’d spent it in bed with Shuri, cradling her close as she sobbed over how to deal with an unplanned pregnancy.

 

“I know this is the right thing,” she’d said, sniffling against his throat with quivering lips. “But a part of me doesn’t know if I want to.”

 

He’d wanted to tell her so badly to just not do it. He could figure something out, they could work something out together, and she didn’t have to go through with the abortion after all. But he didn’t want to push his own feelings and emotions onto her. This was her choice, and though he’d promised he’d support whatever she did, that didn’t mean he felt it was right to tell her he desperately didn’t want her to get rid of their baby.

 

It wasn’t a baby then. Just a fetus. Just a little cluster of cells living in her womb, and he tried reminding himself of that over and over after he’d left. That was, of course, when he’d assumed she’d taken care of the pregnancy sometime during the uprising.

 

He’d stood in the middle of the lab that night and thought to a full year forward and the baby she’d carried to term. He thought of her little sweet smile, her big hazel eyes, and the long lashes that brushed across her smooth, chubby cheeks. And he knew how selfish it was, but no matter the mess he was in, he was so thankful that Shuri hadn’t gone through with the abortion, more than he’d ever let on.

 

The trip back post a year had been his first clue that putting his body through that kind of stress wasn’t a good idea, but he’d ignored the twinges in his chest and the weird thump of his pulse as they prepared to send him back to 2012, where he’d attempt to get in touch with Loki and convince him to work with them in defeating Thanos.

 

“We can’t get the stone from him,” Jane said somberly. “We can’t go back and change what happened. We’ve just got to find a way to fix it. And Loki can fix it.”

 

“Why do you think Loki's the one?” Bruce asked, sliding his fingers through her messy brown hair gently. The sweetness of the motion reminded Tony of Pepper for some reason, a hazy memory of combing his own fingers through her strawberry blonde tresses on the couch during a day of doing little as possible. Regrets built like castles in his head as he watched the two in front of him, but he shook it aside. No more dwelling on what was and what he’d destroyed, at least not right now.

 

“Because of something Nebula told us about the stones.” She pulled out a well worn notebook, bound in leather and full of loose paper with her distinctive messy scrawl across it.  

 

“Apparently, the only people who can handle one of those things without literally disintegrating is an immortal being. Or, a god. Or, in Thanos’ case, a titan. It requires a special sort of person.”

 

“Okay,” Bruce said, sipping on his coffee with a thoughtful face. “But can’t Thor do that?”

 

Jane shook her head and her eyes were wild for a brief second. It would have scared Tony if he wasn’t so interested to know her reasoning behind all this. “Thor technically isn’t an immortal being-“

 

“He’s like, 1500 years old, though,” Tony piped in.

 

“Uh huh, but that’s…just…he just lives a lot longer than we do.”

 

“I remember him telling me his dad was nearly half a million years old,” Bruce added, but Jane shrugged.

 

“More than likely some exaggeration on Thor’s part, but there’s probably some weird mystical reason Odin lived far longer than he would have normally. The lifespan of an Asgardian-and one as powerful as Thor and Odin-is around five thousand years…not five hundred thousand.”

 

“What does this have to do with Loki, though?” Shuri said, shifting Thandi on her hip. Tony watched as his daughter grasped at her mother’s bright beaded necklace and cooed in awe before launching forth to nibble on them, gums smacking happily away. Shuri gave a little grunt and pulled the baby back, though not without some protest.

 

“Loki isn't...er, wasn't Asgardian.” Jane pulled up an article from her phone and motioned for the others to pass it around. “Loki was a Frost Giant. Well, that’s the colloquial term…or slur. I’m not sure which, I suppose you’d have to ask- “

 

“You mean he was a completely different species?”

 

“Yes. And one of the oldest in the galaxy, apparently, second to something called a Watcher. I don’t know nearly enough about them but Nebula tried giving me a run down and…anyway, Loki could have lived a very, very long time. It’s entirely possible he couldn't actually die from natural causes. No one really knows; Frost Giants don’t have any definitive life spans because most of them die in battle.”

 

“Something something, Odin overtook all the realms, something,” Bruce grumbled. “Dude was a colonizer of the biggest order.”

 

“He sounded like an absolute piece of shit from what Brunhilde’s said. She’d know. She was around for the tail end of the conquests.”

 

“The stones, though, Jane,” Tony butted in. He needed an answer on why Loki could handle the stones because he’d need a reason to coerce the alien into cooperating and if they had an idea of what his powers were, he could appeal to that. And his ego, too, he thought, leaning forward to grab a paper towel when Thandi began drooling on her mother’s lab coat. “C’mere baby girl,” he said with a soft smile, and Thandi’s little legs kicked in glee as she settled in his lap. “Give mama a little break.”

 

“Thank you,” Shuri said gratefully, brushing her coat down and moving to where Jane was scrolling through her phone again.

 

“Okay, so yeah, look. Thor is a god of thunder, lightning, fertility-“

 

“What?” Bruce asked, making a face that had Tony nearly chuckling.

 

“Yeah, that’s…I don’t know, Bruce, it’s complicated. Odin somehow has managed to imbue his children with godlike qualities and they actually work but for the most part, Thor isn’t really a god. I mean, he is one…but with a lowercase g. That makes a difference.”

 

“But Loki, I’m assuming,” Shuri interjected, “is a God. Big g.”

 

“Bingo. He’s the real deal and not because Odin said so. He’s a God because of his lineage. No one knows much about that lineage; guy was adopted and just found out in the last few years, but, from what Nebula knows of the Frost Giants-and she knows a surprising lot about just about everything-is that they’re descendants of some of the first beings in the universe. And they’ve got the ability to be actual Gods…though that seems to only happen once in a blue moon.”

 

“And Loki is the lucky son of a bitch who happens to be one. Or happened. He’s dead.” Tony made a face at that fact and sighed. It’d be so convenient if he wasn’t.

 

“Well, yeah. That sucks. Apparently, even Gods can die if they get their necks snapped.” Jane’s eyes were oddly sad, though Tony assumed it was for her ex boyfriend’s sake and not really for Loki, but stranger things had happened. “But Gods can handle the stones. It’s why Loki could handle the space stone without going completely insane or dying. So that’s why we’re going back; to convince Loki that he needs to put some sort of measures into place to fix this. Not prevent…I don’t think we could prevent it no matter what we did, but we can fix this with his help. He’s either going to have to not die, or find a way back from the dead because we need him to handle those stones.”

 

How they were going to do that, Tony hadn’t a clue, but he’d gone back anyway in order to figure it out. He winged it for the most part. His first trip back to 2012 was odd and almost eerie and watching himself from the outside, shrouded in a disguise was unsettling to say the least. But he'd snuck down to the glass encased prison they’d placed Loki in and talked to him.

 

And for hours, it was all he did; talk. There were moments where the bright, incandescent blue of his eyes dimmed to the natural blue green they normally were and it was almost as if little bits and pieces of what Tony rambled about got through to him. He had no real way of knowing right then. He’d have to go back again.

 

He did, scooting back a few hours later in the past and trying something different. He appealed not to his ego, but his intelligence and questioned whether Thanos was truly as formidable as he thought.

 

“I’m just saying, you’ve managed to outsmart the best of us a few times. Why couldn’t you outsmart that jackass?”

 

Loki had raised a brow at that and remained uncharacteristically mum but after long moments of silence, Tony finally pulled back his hood and showed the God his face.

 

“Look. This is gonna sound crazy-“

 

“I’ve heard odder stories, mortal,” Loki said, a hint of a smile in his voice. It was still deranged, a little out of sorts, but there was something else there Tony could hear and he hoped to god it was the beginnings of a seed planted. “Speak your piece.”

 

“I’m….I’m not from here.”

 

“You’re not. I can tell that.”

 

“Yeah, I mean…you’re gonna run into me in a few more hours, but it’ll be me now and not-“

 

“From the future.” Loki was silent and then he turned his eyes to Tony, his real eyes, and there was a strange mixture of fear and anger there. “He succeeds, doesn’t he? Thanos.”

 

Tony nodded. Loki blew out a slow breath.

 

“You’re the only one who can fix it, bub.”

 

The God had laughed at that and dismissed him summarily but not before Tony warned him not to give past him any reason to believe they’d met before. Loki had quieted at that and Tony thought he’d seen a slip of a nod, but he wasn’t sure. His timer was due to go off and he’d be throttled back to the present. He could feel his stomach cramping already as the Slingshot began to pull his physical body back into the right timeline.

 

There were reports to write and notes to jot down upon reappearing on the launch pad, but he had to throw up first. And his head wouldn’t stop spinning and his heart felt like it would melt if he breathed to hard. He gave himself a moment to collect himself, ignoring how Bruce worried over him or how Jane frowned at his erratic pulse.

 

Shuri didn’t make any mention of his condition. Shuri didn’t seem to notice.

 

He wasn’t sure what bothered him most about that. There was a voice in the back of his head telling him he should have known better but he still had held out some sort of perverse hope that she actually cared more than she was trying to let on. And yet, she seemed to wobble back and forth from little snatches of affection and treating him like he was no one to her. He was tired of the whiplash.

 

They hadn’t made love since that day in the lab. He’d gotten kisses in corners and touches during lunch, had spent the night with her and Thandi in her bedroom curled up like a real family. And that was probably what hurt so badly. He saw what they possibly could be if she just let him love her. She didn’t want to and he knew the reasoning behind why. If they could fix this, all of this, and get everyone back, he’d have Bucky Barnes to deal with and time ticked on as to how much longer he could hold some claim over her heart.

 

Truthfully, he didn’t think he really had much of a claim anyway, but it was worth a try to see.

 

As he finished writing up the last minute details of his trip in time, he thought he saw the lights dim a bit. It was only noon; there was no reason it should be so dark. And why was it so damned hot in here? Shuri usually kept the air at a neutral temperature so everyone would be reasonably comfortable. He’d never had an issue before. Sounds jumbled around in his head; the hum of the Slingshot and the chatter between the other three, the babbles from Thandi who rested in Jane’s lap. All of a sudden it was too loud and his throat felt too tight and his chest hurt, his body felt as though it was disintegrating. Tony wondered, for a brief, wild moment, if the snap had any residual effect nearly three years afterward. It was almost worth an ask, but when he glanced up to see what Bruce or Shuri was doing, he couldn’t stop his stomach from rolling violently.

 

“I, um…”

 

He swallowed, tried to get his mouth moving, but nothing would come out. Distantly, he thought he heard someone calling his name, the voice anxious and an awful lot like Shuri’s. But the world was spinning and his body felt on fire and he had no time to think about who was calling him or why when he felt himself slump forward and down, and then the world went dark.

 

* * *

 

Sounds filter around in his mind as consciousness returns. He knows he’s awake when the beeping beside him drowns out the memory of her soft moans. And it’s when he moves his hand, heavy and sluggish as it is, does he realize where he is. Reality slices through his hazy, dream drugged mind. The beach is gone, the sun isn’t as bright, and the bed he lies in is crisp and clean and sterile, much different from the plush mattress he’d been dreaming about. It smells like antiseptic ointment and alcohol gel.

 

He turns his head and groans at how heavy that feels too. What had happened? Had he imagined everything thus far and had somehow ended up in the hospital post Thanos? Or maybe even further back, post Afghanistan, where he’d never been taken hostage and had to build his way out in a scrapped piece of suit. Maybe he could start everything over from the beginning, quietly dismantle the arms department of Stark Industries and woo Pepper without the pressure of being a superhero over his head.

 

Or maybe…he keeps his eyes closed and his mouth curls into a pained smile…maybe he’ll wake up in Malibu at the old house and Pepper will just be his friend and assistant. He’ll fire Obadiah Stane and run off on vacation with Rhodey and seek out Bruce Banner and befriend him. He’ll ignore Nick Fury and his Avenger’s initiative, never meet Natasha Romanoff or Steve Rogers or Thor or Clint Barton and he’ll be normal. And, he thinks, his heart thumping hard in his chest at the thought, he’d wait for Shuri, for the inevitable day when he’d get to meet her and marvel in her genius. He’d do this the right way instead of ruining her reputation and spoiling her innocence.

 

There’s a little part of him that breaks when he opens his eyes and realizes he’s in the sick ward of Shuri’s laboratory. He’s already met her. He’s already destroyed everything in his life and ruined his friendships and betrayed his wife. He’s already the father of two beautiful humans who didn’t deserve the kind of person he was as a father. He wants to curl up under the crisp white sheets and sob, for a life he wished he could have rewritten.

 

What if? What could have happened if, if, if?

 

 _I’d go back further,_ he thinks, riding with this fantasy to the end because he already hurts. _One more blow won’t make it any worse, it can’t.  I’d go back in time and keep Mom and Dad from getting in that car…stall by at least an hour. Maybe that would have changed everything. I’d go back and do better when I was younger, spend my life helping others instead of fueling my own selfish ego and needs. I’d try to build something, anything with Dad, cherish Mom every second, go visit Aunt Peggy more often. I would do so much more than what I did. I would fix everything._

 

When he opens his eyes again, there’s tears on his cheeks and in his throat but he’s too weak and feverish to even cry about it. Instead, he rolls over and groans as his limbs protest the move, burrows in the pillow, and hopes to god he can go back to sleep, this time never to wake up.

 

But just as the silence starts to lull him into darkness, he hears the door open and footsteps on the tiled floor.

 

“Mr. Stark?”

 

It’s Nakia’s voice, quiet and gentle and soothing in that way of hers. He’s not sure how she feels about him-what her opinion is on what he’d done to Shuri-but she’s never been anything but kind to him. So he obliged her, groaning under his breath as he rolls over. She regards him with sympathy and a little bit of worry. He tries offering her a smile but his face can barely move and it comes across pained and cracked.

 

“Are you in any pain?” she asks, making her way over to the monitors and the drip he realizes is in his hand. He thinks for a second if he should admit that he’s drowning in it or lie and pretend he’s just a bit groggy. But Nakia doesn’t give him any reason to think he should lie, so for the first time in a long time, he’s honest.

 

“Yeah.”

 

She nods slowly and then sits at the chair beside his bed, crossing her hands over her knee gracefully. “On a scale of 1 to 10…”

 

“9.”

 

She frowns. It’s pretty, the way everything else about her is pretty. And it’s thoughtful, too, the way she is about everything. “That drip should have enough dosage in it to keep you from hurting for the next few days...should I have the nurses readjust it?”

 

He coughs out what he thinks might be a laugh but just sounds sad and broken. “No, no, it’s fine. I meant in here.” He taps his temple, pauses, and waits for her to catch his meaning and he nearly smiles when it’s barely a second. His smile is swallowed when she sighs and looks away.

 

”Well, you didn’t specify mental or physical. I went with the worse.” He coughs and then tries shifting his body in the bed when she watches him sadly. “Uh, as far as physical pain…maybe a four. My head feels like shit.” She opens her mouth to say something else, but closes it and Tony worries he’d offended her. It would be a shame to offend someone like Nakia, though he’s done worse in the last two years. “Excuse my language.”

 

“Of course,” she finally says, her mouth neutral but her eyes aching. For him? He didn’t want to imagine anyone still gave a shit. _No one loves me but my children. No one gives a damn about a fuck up._ And yet, she seemed genuinely concerned about his well being. He let the warmth of that seep through to the middle of him where everything had become twisted and burned out. And it was enough that the sun wasn’t so bright anymore and waking up from a dream like the one he’d had didn’t hurt quite as much.

 

“So um…I’m not sure what happened except I may have passed out or something like that.”

 

“Yes.”

 

“I mean, I hadn’t eaten much that day. It happens.”

 

Nakia drew in a sharp breath and then leaned forward a bit, insuring she had his full attention.

 

“You actually nearly died, Mr. Stark.”

 

“Tony,” he grumbles, feeling something cold wash across him. “I’m not…you’re looking at me in a hospital gown. You can call me Tony, your…um…”

 

Nakia’s smile was a little bitter. “We never quite got as far as the wedding,” she said, referencing her dearly departed fiancé. “Most people simply refer to me as Nakia. Or, if you’d like, Ms. Uwe. It’s my family name.”

 

“Nakia works, if that’s not too forward?” he offers and then she laughs, a soft thing that makes him smile in spite of everything.

 

“'Too forward' should be your middle name, Tony.”

 

Yeah, he likes her. She’s his kind of people-witty, sarcastic, but with a heart as sweet as candy and good as gold. She’s far too good to be trying to make any sort of acquaintances with him, but he’s starving for someone who isn’t repeatedly telling him what a fuck up he is. He’s more than aware, thank you.

 

Nakia tells him he’d passed out in the lab and that his vitals had plummeted. Consequence of travelling in that machine, more than likely, and as such, he’s strictly forbidden from accessing it again.

 

“I don’t want to be a nuisance-“

 

“Hmm.”

 

“Anymore than I already am,” he amends, and her mouth curls up just a bit. “But…I kinda _have_ to go back. I’m the one he’s been talking to.”

 

“He?”

 

“Loki. Thor’s brother? He’s key to fixing all this.”

 

Nakia makes a mental note of it. “I’m sure he’s comfortable talking with you on the matter, but Tony…you will die if you try accessing the time machine once more. Even if it’s for five minutes…your body can’t handle that. Captain Rogers has volunteered to go in your stead.”

 

Tony frowns, the mention of Steve rankling worse than being told what to do with his own life. “I’m…okay, I get that. I do, trust me. But you have to realize that me dying isn’t the worst that could happen.”

 

Nakia narrows her eyes and her face is suddenly very serious. “I can think of several people who would vehemently disagree with that statement,” she says. “Regardless of what you have done or who you have hurt, there are still many people who would be brokenhearted if something were to-“

 

“None of them give a damn,” he says, his voice cracking, his chest aching again. She was filling his head with a load of crap and though he liked her, he wouldn’t let anyone lie to him. Not anymore. He’d been lying to himself for entirely too long as it was. But Nakia would not be deterred, and the look on her face gave him pause.

 

“You know significantly less than you think you do, Tony.”

 

With that, she gets up from her seat and smooths down her tunic, straightening the chair she’d sat in until it was in the same spot as where she’d found it. It seems as though she’s reaching for a word, a way of trying to get her point across, except she settles on one final statement, in that same gentle tone, her expression full of pity and sadness. He blinks in the harsh light of morning, his eyes aching as if he needed to cry. He was so tired of crying. He had a feeling he wouldn’t be able to stop if he started right that second.

 

Before the tears can overwhelm him the way he knows they would, Nakia turns back to him, her hand hovering over the bed and her eyes resolute.

 

“She would miss you,” she says, softly, and for a moment, Tony isn’t sure who the 'she' Nakia is speaking of. He presses his lips into a line to keep from asking; it’s safer to assume it’s Thandi she’s speaking about. But there’s something in her eyes that tell him she means more than his daughter and he can feel that clench in his chest when he dreams of the possibility of what Shuri could want.

 

He wants to protest but he doesn’t have the energy. Instead, he closes his eyes and leans his head back and lets the silence of the hospital room soak into his skin. The sun is warmer than he’d realized and the bed actually comfortable. He takes in every sensation against his body and thinks for one horrifying moment of what would have happened if he had died. Jude wouldn’t know just how much he’d loved him. His Thandi wouldn’t have him as her father. She’d grow up thinking Steve Rogers was her dad and no one would ever tell her how much Tony Stark loved her and would die for her and would give the entire world to keep her safe.

 

He could do that, if he lived. But he had to survive this and Nakia was right; going back when he knew there was no surviving another trip was suicide. And though he’d flirted with the idea of it more than once in the last few years, he found he wanted to live, if only to spite everyone who thought he probably shouldn’t be alive.

 

He really, really wanted to kiss Shuri again, too. Whether she wanted him was something he needed to live to find out. _No one loves me but my children,_ he thought, _but at least someone cares enough to tell me that._ He opens his eyes to find Nakia waiting, and he nods but once so that her mouth sets into something like a smile.

 

“I’ll let them know.” She pats his hand and turns toward the door, and just as she slips from his room, he stops her, his voice raspy with unshed tears.

 

“Did she…was she worried about me?”

 

Nakia’s face softens.

 

“She’ll deny it. But she did. She does.” There’s a pause where he thinks she wants to say more, a flicker of a confession on her face, but it disappears so quickly, Tony isn’t sure if it was ever there at all. “Get some sleep, Tony,” she says finally, and with another small smile, she leaves him in silence.

 

* * *

 

Shuri finally comes to see him on his third day in the hospital. In the meantime he’s spent every waking moment wishing he could sleep or hoping someone would bring Thandi, but he’d been left mostly alone except for the occasional nurse and one more visit from Nakia, who’d told him Jane would be going back instead of Steve. That was a much better option than the Captain, and he was glad someone had the sense to keep Rogers out of their work as much as they could. It was enough he’d taken over as father of his child. Tony hated to say it aloud, but he really didn’t want Steve involved any more than he already was.

 

He was tired of the ever present, unselfish, self righteous hero. Steve got to stay in Wakanda while Shuri fought for her crown. Steve got the admiration and respect of the Wakandans. Steve was the one who took Thandiwe out on walks in the gardens and carried her through the palace in plain view of anyone who could see, solidifying the rumors that he was her father while Tony had to hide in the shadows. There was no one he could talk to about his jealousy and the way it ate away at him, or how much he missed his boy back home and the silence on the other end when he called New York. Bruce didn’t want to hear it and Jane was busy and Nakia didn’t deserve to have all of that piled on her when she’d only just really began talking to him.

 

Truth was, Shuri needed to hear it. Shuri needed to know why his fists clenched white when he waddled over to the window of his room and saw Steve Rogers wrap an arm around her waist, or carry his baby girl on his hip, or smile as though he were the sun and everything was right and Tony hadn’t nearly died trying to fix the fuck up that Thanos had brought to him. He was tired and he was angry and he couldn’t help but sulk about it, even when she cracked open the door to his room and waited, eyes wide and innocent though he knew she was anything but.

 

 _Innocent my ass_ , he thinks with a mental scoff. And yet, as she tip toes over to where he lay prone watching her, his fingers curled into his blanket and his body still weak and aching, he felt all his anger slip away because her lip wobbles and she grasps his hand, her skin warm against the still too cold of his cramped fingers.

 

“Does your head still ache?” she asks, after long minutes just stroking his skin. He shakes it, then winces because the ever-present throb in his skull hadn’t quite gone away. Probably stress and irritation taking its toll, but whose fault was that? For once, he could mollify himself by saying it wasn’t his.

 

“I’m taking that to mean that yes, it does in fact hurt.” She sounds almost amused, and for a second he lets the warmth of her slight smile tingle beneath his skin. “I’ve got to get you off this drip and onto something a little less vigorous.”

 

“From what your sister in law said, I need vigorous.”

 

Her face smooths over then, professional as ever and he hates that so much.

 

“You’ve suffered numerous organ failures and heart attacks enough to kill just about anyone else. Were it not for the arc reactor still in your body, you wouldn’t have survived this.”

 

She’s silent after that, though she still holds his hand and he lets her because he doesn’t want her to ever pull away. Maybe if she keeps touching him, he’ll work up the courage to ask her what it is she wants from him.

 

“I’ll have to add organ failure to my long list of injuries suffered in the pursuit of defending the Earth,” he quips, hoping she’ll snort out a laugh and swat at him. But she frowns, prettily of course, although it hurts when she hisses as though he’d stung her and pulls her hands away.

 

“Why do you do that?” she asks, eyes quietly angry. “Why do you joke around about your life? Nakia said you were willing to go back one last time although you’d been well informed of the consequences.” She shakes her head and he swallows against the lump in his throat. “You’re so quick to die, Tony Stark. Why can’t you just live for once?”

 

“Who’d want me to?” he asks, laughing bitterly. “I’ve fucked everything in my life up at this point. I don’t think anyone would miss me.”

 

 _She would miss you_ , he remembers Nakia saying, but common sense tells him _she_ wasn’t who was sitting beside him. Tony nearly laughs at the thought. He’d never had much common sense and his heart couldn’t stop hoping, wishing.

 

“You’d be surprised,” she says resolutely, holding her head a little higher, as if she were finished with the conversation. But he stops her before she can shift to something else, curling his fingers into her palm so that her breath shakes.

 

“Would you miss me?”

 

She’s quiet for a long minute, until she looks up and her eyes are full of tears.

 

“I didn’t sleep for three days. I used everything I had and some I didn’t to keep you breathing and alive. I begged Steve to let me use just a little of his blood to make a serum to keep you from dying because you kept flat lining, because every time that little beep beep beep quit, my heart stopped.”

 

He blinks in the afternoon sun and struggles to draw in a breath, his skin suddenly itchy, his whole body tense as a bowstring.

 

“Did he do it?”

 

“What?”

 

“Steve,” he clarifies. “did he…were you able to-“

 

“You’re talking to me right now, aren’t you?” she snaps, her face visibly annoyed but it’s better than her being close to tears. There’s a bite to her words and a glint in her eye and he nearly smiles because this is why he’d fallen in love with her, this was his kitten come back to scratch and bite.

 

“Good old Captain America,” he says in a dry monotone and much to his surprise, Shuri snorts then, the closest he’s heard her laugh since that day in the lab. He closes his eyes for a second to remember the taste of her skin as she’d breastfed their daughter and the soft lullaby she’d sang to put Thandi to sleep two nights later, the three of them curled up under her sheets, warm and right. And he wonders why the hell he’d wanted to die so badly when he could have that for the rest of his life.

 

Maybe. It depended on what she wanted. God, he hoped she wanted what he did, even if just a little. Somewhere, he found the courage to open his mouth and before he could stop himself, he launches forward with it. _Spit it out, Tony._

 

“What do you want?” he asks, and she sucks in a breath as if he’d asked her the meaning of the universe. He knows what the meaning of his universe is; she’s sitting beside him, worrying her lip with her teeth and staring at the wall.

 

“I don’t know.”

 

“Yeah you do,” he counters, because now that he’s got it out, he’s not gonna let this go. “What do you want? Who do you want? What do you see when you think of me and of you in a year, in five, in ten?”

 

She closes her eyes and sighs, turning her hand upright so that he can hold it tight. And yet, she still doesn’t give him a complete answer.

 

“ _I don’t know_ , Tony,” she says again, and he knows now that she really doesn’t. It would hurt him if he wasn’t aware of what she had riding on her shoulders. “As of now, I’m still queen. I don’t get to decide what I want without consequence.”

 

“But if you could-“

 

“If I could doesn’t matter. Not right now.” She picks at the skin of his fingertips and finally meets his eyes and there’s so much confusion and uncertainty in her eyes that his chest aches. He can’t resist reaching up to cradle her face with his other hand, and he feels warmth bloom in his chest when she leans into him, her lips parting just a bit.

 

“I know what I want,” he says in a soft voice. “I want this. I want you and Thandi and us.”

 

Her breath is slow and pained and he knows right then that what he wants and what she probably wants are two very different things. But he gives her time and holds out hope because he’s desperate for anything at all but the pain in his gut when he thinks of a life without her.

 

“I need time.”

 

“Okay.”

 

“I can’t…it’s not easy, and I-“

 

He kisses her palm and offers her a smile the best he can. “I know.”

 

She leaves him with a brush of her lips across his forehead, and though his dreams are still storms in his mind, he sleeps just a little bit better.

 

* * *

 

Jane comes to him a few days after to tell him that her jump back was successful, that her stomach hurt like hell, and that she was never doing anything like that again.

 

“At least not in the foreseeable future,” she says, grinning in spite of how pale she is. “We’ve gotta perfect that thing if we’re actually gonna attempt anymore time travel in the future.”

 

Tony swallows a bit of orange juice and shakes his head. “I don’t think we need to do anymore time travelling ever, but maybe that’s me being a wuss.”

 

She laughs, lightly, and then sobers as she settles at the foot of his bed. Her eyes are bright, her lips chatter with cold, and he knows she needs to rest and recover, but she’s brimming with something to tell him.

 

“This stays between the two of us,” she finally says, in an almost whisper.

 

“Why not everyone else?” he asks, but he leans forward anyway. He’s got to know what she’s going to say. “Why not tell your boyfriend?” When she blushes, he chuckles and taps his forehead. “See, I knew it. I’m not as dense as the lot of you think I am.”

 

Jane’s quirk of the mouth is telling but she won’t offer much else. She doesn’t deny it, either, and Tony is a mixture of oddly happy and slightly melancholy at the idea of Bruce having a love of his own. He doesn’t know why, though he’s sure if he really dug deep, he’d find the answer.

 

“Because it’s only about you, that’s why.”

 

“Spill it, Foster. I’m almost done with my juice which means I’ll have to pee in about five minutes flat.”

 

“Ew, you’ve timed it?” She wrinkles her nose, but when he eyes her expectantly, she sighs and begins. And what she tells him makes his stomach twist.

 

“I found a loophole. A wrinkle in time, so to speak. Seems as though Madeline L’Engle was on to something because you can jump back in time and fix…certain things.”

 

“Like?” He doesn’t like where this is going, but Jane keeps on anyway.

 

“Like…say you were to go back. Not you, exactly, because I don’t think you could again. But someone. Say I go back. I find you, oh, about two years ago. I interact with you two years ago in a specific time period, at a specific spot and it’ll change a few things and maybe…you know, I realize you and I haven’t talked about-“ she waves her hands around –“this…but you could change it.”

 

Tony knows his mouth is slack and his eyes glassy but he almost can’t believe what she’s implying because this was the exact reason they hadn’t gone back and stopped the snap. They can’t fuck with time, not that way or it’ll undo everything that’s happened since, and that means that he and Shuri would have never-

 

 _Oh_.

 

He swallows hard. He watches her face as realization hits him. She shifts from eager to tell him to reluctant to continue and finally, remorseful, a strange sort of guilt creeping across her face.

 

“It was just a suggestion,” she whispers. “You wouldn’t even know after it's done. That’s what the wrinkle does, it shifts time just enough, it-“

 

He shakes his head one time, finite. No. Never. He’d never.

 

“I’m sorry,” she grits out, swinging her legs off the side of the bed and heading for the door. The silence is suffocating and he struggles not to lash out and scream at her. How could she even suggest something like that?

 

But hadn’t he been thinking of the same thing himself?

 

“For what it’s worth,” he says, if only to wipe the look off her face because it makes him feel ill, “it’s not a bad idea. You know. If there wasn’t a baby in the equation.”

 

She nods and smooths her hair back with shaking hands. “Yeah. Yeah, I um…I thought of that, too. I shouldn’t have even said anything.”

 

He doesn’t tell her it's okay because now he can’t stop thinking about it. And when he’s alone again, he pulls the sheets up over his head, screaming his grief into the pillow.

 

* * *

 

“You’ve got to cut yourself some slack,” Bruce tells him, two days after when he’s discharged and back in his room. Shuri forbids him from coming to the lab so he doesn’t over exert himself, she says, but he knows she’s keeping him from the Slingshot on the off chance he’d try one more jump just in case. He’s done with that, he thinks. If Jane hadn’t gotten through to Loki, then they’re all fucked. But something inside him says she had and that their combined efforts weren’t for naught.

 

“Yeah, I usually would if this were any other time, but if this works, we’ll be fighting that purple bastard again in a few weeks’ time.”

 

Walking was a chore. Breathing, without his oxygen, was a chore. Just sitting up required far too much energy and for once, he wished whatever transfusion he’d gotten from Steve Rogers had done more than keep him alive. At the rate he’s going, it’ll take just as long to get from his bed to the big windows and back without running out of energy. And every day he spends convalescent is another day that Steve can take Thandi through the gardens.

 

 _My job_ , he thinks bitterly, but he couldn’t even do that.

 

“Tony, you almost died. Like, _died_ died. I’m surprised you’ve even managed to get this far so soon with how bad off you were.” Bruce pauses and places a hand on Tony’s shoulder as he sits dejectedly on the edge of his bed, the effort of putting on pants making him want to take another nap. “Don’t beat yourself up because you’re tired. If my organs failed, I’m pretty sure I’d be fucking tired too.”

 

Tony rolls his eyes but the worry from Bruce and the warmth of his hand does more to bolster his spirits than much of anything in the last few days has. He still hasn’t seen his daughter since passing out in the lab and he misses her so. He misses Shuri, too, but he knows she’s busy. He knows she needs space and to think, so he doesn’t push it.

 

“Fine. But you’ll get tired of fetching me piss cups because I can’t make it to the toilet on time.”

 

Bruce makes a face but doesn’t argue. Instead, he moves from Tony’s side, leaving him feeling a little cold and empty. He faces the windows and lets out a slow sigh, then turns to Tony and catches his eye.

 

“I can’t forgive you,” he begins. Tony has no idea why he’d pick now of all times to talk about this, but he listens because getting something is better than nothing.

 

“Okay. I mean, I don’t imagine anyone ever really will.” He shrugs. He’s been trying to prepare for that inevitability, but it doesn’t make hearing that any easier.

 

Bruce snorts. “You haven’t let me finish, asshole.”

 

Tony blinks but waves for him to continue. “Well, do go on my good man.”

 

“I can’t forgive you because that isn’t my job. That’s Pepper’s. And if she does…well, that’ll be good you know? You guys had a good thing.”

 

Tony grimaces. “I fucked that up. It's torn to shreds, Bruce. She won’t talk to me. I don’t blame her.”

 

“Okay, but what if she decides she does want to talk to you? What if she wants to work this out?”

 

Tony has to admit he hadn’t thought of that. He’d been operating under the impression that Pep was done and all he had now was Wakanda. That was if he even had that, but he didn’t think that Shuri would take Thandi away from him, even if she didn’t want him. She wasn’t that cruel.

 

“I don’t…I haven’t even-“

 

Bruce shakes his head. “You’re hoping Shuri will want to make a go at it, then? Cause that’s kinda fucking stupid, and you’ve been on a roll doing stupid shit.”

 

“I seem to keep setting new records,” Tony says glumly, but Bruce doesn’t comment. Instead, he turns back to the window and watches below, the sun catching on the glimmer of silver in his dark hair.

 

“Just think about it. Just think about where you really need to be, okay? Think about your son and your wife and any second chance you might get. Don’t base your life on a fantasy. It’ll kill you, you know.”

 

Tony slides his hands over the cool of his bed sheets, listens to the thump of his pulse in his throat, a sluggish thing that makes him wish not for the first time that he’d just get better already. He couldn’t think of a future with Pepper if he didn’t know what Shuri wanted because he knew now what he really wanted. And though he’d give anything to fix the gulf he’d ripped open between he and his wife, he didn’t really think he could go back. Not now, not like this. And then he remembers that Pepper knows nothing about his daughter and he knows for a fact that going back to her, pretending everything could work, wouldn’t.

 

“Bruce, she doesn’t know about Thandi. There’s no way I could do that to her.”

 

“You’ve already fucked around on her, Tony,” Bruce says matter-of-factly, and Tony can’t help but wince. If his friend notices, he doesn’t make mention of it. “What’s a kid gonna do to make it worse?”

 

 _A lot_ , he thinks, but he doesn’t voice it. Bruce turns once again and then waves, to whomever is outside the window. Probably Steve and Thandi since it’s half past five. And he feels his stomach sour at the idea of leaving her here to be raised by Captain America and Bucky Barnes instead of doing the job himself.

 

But who would raise Jude if he never went home? Rhodey? Happy? He doesn’t like the idea of that much, either, and he groans internally at the crack he’d gotten his ass in.

 

“Wanna go down and say hi?” Bruce says with a sarcastic sort of lilt. Tony wants to chunk a pillow at his head and tell him to go to hell, but he doesn’t have the energy. And then, he thinks, that maybe that’s actually not a bad idea. Maybe…

 

“If you don’t mind helping me out there, sure,” he says, slowly gathering his slippers and pushing them onto his heavy feet. Everything feels heavy, but he’s got some things to set straight and there’s not time for dawdling. Bruce raises a brow in disbelief but when Tony doesn’t stop, he sighs, bends down to help him off the bed, and holds him fast at they hobble out the door.

 

* * *

 

If it’s any consolation, Thandi comes to him the second he appears from behind the African violets. He cradles her close, arms weak but his heart lighter than it’s been in forever, and he snuggles her tight, paying no attention to how Steve and Bruce look at him. Neither of them have kids. Neither of the know what it’s like to love someone so much it made their bones ache. At least, not like this.

 

“Glad you could join us, Bruce,” Steve says, seemingly ignoring Tony, but then his voice softens, something like regret on the edges of it. “You too, Tony. I think baby girl missed you.”

 

Tony looks and searches Steve’s face for the smugness he figures should be there but the man’s face is as earnest as it’s ever been. For a while they stand there like that, Tony holding Thandi under his chin and Steve flush against the bushes, until Bruce clears his throat and breaks the odd spell over the both of them.

 

“Jane’s wanting to see me about…something,” he offers, backing away from the little party in the garden. He shoots Tony one last look and waves to Steve before he’s down the pathways back to the palace. And then, the three of them are alone.

 

Steve doesn’t move until Tony does. His knees are getting weak and the bench is calling his name, so he sits, shifting Thandi so she sits in his lap and nibbles on her little bare feet.

 

After a moment where he’s not sure if he’ll run or not, Steve sits beside them.

 

“I overreacted,” he finally says, almost too quiet for Tony to hear. But he does, and he snorts out a laugh because that was the understatement of the year. Even so, he can’t even be angry about it anymore.

 

“I can’t say I didn’t deserve it.”

 

“You did. Just not…you know.”

 

“Hm.” Tony sighs and turns his head to look at Steve, the strong profile and regal brow furrowed in thought. And not for the first time is he startled with how handsome this man is. He wonders if that’s why he’s always hated him so much. Because he never could really hate him, not when Steve hadn’t given him any real reason to. It’s been a fight against an imaginary enemy, his PTSD and insecurities pulling him apart and giving him a phantom grudge. He’s tired of it, all of it.

 

“If I thought,” he says, stretching his legs out, “that beating my ass would fix all I’ve fucked up, I’d tell you to go for it as many times as you’ve got energy for.”

 

“I’ve got a lot of that,” Steve says with a hint of a smirk and Tony actually finds himself chuckling. They’re quiet again, but it’s not nearly as uncomfortable as it could have been. Still odd, but not stifling. Thandi coos and Steve reaches out to grasp her chubby hand, his smile so sweet and genuine that Tony can’t even be angry anymore. The man loved his daughter. He couldn’t deny that fact.

 

And then, he wonders about the love Steve had for Thandi and how that translated to Shuri and he almost asks, and almost puts his foot in his mouth again. Steve saves him the trouble.

 

“She’ll choose him, Tony.”

 

He didn’t want to hear that. He wanted to live in a bubble where he could pretend that Bucky Barnes was in Shuri’s past and he could be her present and her future. But he knew how treacherous the heart could be. And there was nothing in the world like first love. He sighs, closing his eyes against the beginnings of another beautiful Wakandan sunrise.

 

“You sound so put out about it, Rogers,” he finally says, attempting sarcasm to shield against the pain. But it’s no use, not when he opens his eyes and sees the sadness, the hurt, in Steve’s. And then he knows. And he feels a sad sort of camaraderie in that hurt. “You love her too, huh?”

 

Steve doesn’t say a word. He glances to the ground, shrugs, and then covers his face with his hands.

 

“I’m gonna move out the way. When Buck comes back, I’m gonna step to the side. I won’t fight it.” He tilts his head toward the sky and wiggles the finger that Thandi is still clinging to. “I won’t tell you what to do, Tony, but…”

 

He shakes his head even though some part of him knows that Steve’s probably right. But he can’t give up. He refuses to go down without a fight. Anything worth having is worth fighting for. God knows Shuri was worth fighting for.

 

“I’m gonna break my own heart,” he says with a sad laugh, and he lowers his head to kiss his daughter’s soft curls. “But I have to try.”

 

Steve nods his understanding. “I hate this.”

 

“Me too.”

 

Thandi starts to whine then, probably bored with the lack of movement, so Steve gets up and reaches out to take her. Tony hesitates for a moment. It’s like giving his whole heart over to someone he isn’t sure he even likes at this point, but knows that in another life, he could have loved. But she keeps fussing and he’s too tired to walk, so he hands her over, slowly, brushing imaginary dirt from her diapered bottom and meeting blue eyes against the purple and orange sky.

 

“Thank you,” he says, the words like lead on his tongue. And yet, it’s freeing to admit that Steve wasn’t the bad guy after all. “For everything.”

 

The captain nods, a brush of a smile on his lips and he presses that mouth, beard soft and ticklish against her skin, to Thandi’s cheek, making her giggle.

 

It’s an odd moment Tony commits to memory. He knows he’ll think of this moment later on, years from now, and marvel at the understanding between the two of them. He’ll think of the love this man had for the child he’d made with a woman he shouldn’t have ever touched, and he’ll laugh at the absurdity of it and then revisit that moment and that emotion in startling nostalgia and sadness.

 

And he’ll remember the strange electricity on the air, a silence unlike anything he’d ever heard before nor would hear again. There’s the hint of rain on the wind and Tony thinks he sees fear in Steve’s eyes as Thandi, once again, begins to cry.

 

But then Bruce is stumbling down the garden path again, wide eyed and breathless as he rambles and Tony knows.

 

He grunts out in pain and exhaustion as he gets up from the bench, taking Steve’s outstretched hand to help, and he glances toward the sky.

 

He’s got to go get Peter.

 

It’s time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm back on tumblr, if you'd like to come say hello! 
> 
> lilithenaltum.tumblr.com


	6. what we may be

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is on the long side, as a fair warning. I do hope you enjoy it and that it was worth the wait. <3

It all happens so fast that he never leaves for Titan. And he doesn’t need to, because by the time Steve and Bruce are pulling him into the palace on pained, aching legs, he sees the golden, glowing portals of Strange and Wong lighting up the sky.

 

Thandi starts to cry in the rush of energy and Steve holds her tightly, murmuring soothing words in her ear. But nothing helps until they’re in the cool safeness of the palace and Tony can lean against the wall.

 

“It’s fine, Steve, I’ve got her,” he says, and he reaches out for his daughter. But his head is whirling and his brain is fuzzy and he must look ill because Steve shakes his head, though it’s a gentle motion.

 

“You’re not doing good, Tony. You need to get somewhere safe and lie down.”

 

Tony swallows hard and almost starts to argue. Thandi’s cries get louder and Bruce is tugging his shirt sleeve and it’s so much light outside that it’s almost blinding. His belly tangles in knots as anticipation and fear and anxiety thrum through his body.

 

“I’m fine,” he insists, blinking the film from his eyes. He’s not fine. He has no idea what the hell is wrong; he thought he was in the clear and that he just needed a bit more rest. But his legs are burning now and his chest feels as though it’ll cave in. He almost doesn’t want Thandi to see him this way.

 

“Tony…no,” Steve says firmly. “You’ve gotta get some rest, okay? Thandi will be fine. I’ll make sure of it.” He shifts the still wailing baby in his arms and presses a hand to Tony’s shoulder and it’s warm and solid. Tony closes his eyes for a split second, and he imagines a world where he and Steve Rogers hadn’t spent the last eight years fighting each other. _We could have been something more than this_ , he thinks bitterly. He hopes to god it’s not too late for them now.

 

Resigned, he nods slowly and slumps against the wall with only Bruce there to hold him up. He hurts so much and everywhere now, and the brilliant, bright golden light outside is hurting his eyes. But he can suffer through it if means he can see Peter. All he wants is a hug, a chance at an apology, to see the intelligent and kind eyes staring back at him like they used to. He almost sobs, and Steve’s eyes look so sad.

 

“C’mon, Tony,” Bruce says softly. “Let’s get you to bed, okay?”

 

“Thandi-“

 

“I’ve got her,” Steve says again. “I’ll find the Queen mother and then bring the kid to come see you, okay?”

 

Tony thinks he nods, but isn’t sure. He isn’t sure of much of anything right now, except the pain and the exhaustion. He uses whatever strength he has left to lean forward and kiss tear streaked cheeks on Thandi’s sweet face and she calms for just a moment, her cries shifting into shuddering breaths.

 

“Be good for uncle Stevie, sweet girl,” he whispers and the moment Bruce drags him back, she starts to cry again.

 

“Tony!” It’s Shuri.

 

The air is too thick and his fingers are going numb. Bruce holds him steady, but it isn’t enough, not at least until he hears her voice, worry thick and ragged. She rushes over to his side and sweeps her hand across his clammy brow and she looks like an angel, a beacon in the center of the golden light that spreads through the giant windows of the palace.

 

“What happened?” she asks, eyes searching Steve and Bruce. She sweeps a hand across her daughter’s face and the baby calms nearly instantly, though Steve still holds her close. “Why was he outside?!”

 

Bruce sounds so contrite that Tony almost chuckles. It’d be funny if he didn’t think he was going to die. “I uh…he wanted to sit in the garden for a bit, and walk with Thandi-“

 

“It’s my fault, Shuri,” Steve says in that quiet, calming voice of his. “I let him sit and talk for too long. I should have-“

 

“It doesn’t matter now,” she growls, pulling him to her side, though the motion jostles something inside him and he cries out. He breathes in deeply and opens his eyes and hers are staring back at him, angry and scared, and he tries to smile.

 

“Wonderful weather we’re having, huh, pretty baby?” he slurs, the fuzz starting to creep over again. He doesn’t realize what he’d said until she gasps and then she slings her arm over her shoulder and pulls him with more strength than he’d thought it possible for her to have down the corridor.

 

He can’t focus on much of what they’re saying anymore, only that Shuri is giving orders like the queen she is. He snuggles into the crook of her neck and tries to slow his breathing, tries to focus on something so he doesn’t pass out, tries to keep himself upright. It’s almost impossible at this point, though, and when they finally reach her rooms, he slides into her bed without any resistance. And then there’s a twist in his chest, sharp and unrelenting, and he cries out for one hard second until the darkness swallows him mercifully.

 

* * *

 

He jerks awake with a start and the first thing he realizes is how loud it is around him. There’s blaster fire going on outside, gun shots, the screams and screeches of a battle, and Tony’s eyes peel open heavily as he tries to scramble off the bed and to the window.

 

He doesn’t ache anymore, but he’s unwieldy and heavy and he stumbles as he plods over towards the balcony. The air is rushing around him in almost chilling degrees, far too cold for Wakanda even in December. His heart plummets to his belly as he watches the scene below him, gargantuan alien creatures plowing up the earth and in the middle, Thanos, mad with glory as he fights the returned Avengers.

 

He screams, but he knows no one can hear anything over the chaos. He stands helpless and weak on the balcony and watches, until a rushing shadow swoops past him and lands behind him.

 

“Mr. Stark!”

 

It’s been three years since he’d heard that voice and he almost cries to hear it now. He turns and Peter stands behind him, grinning like the kid he was, muck spread across his handsome face when the mask lowers.

 

He’s alive. He’s perfectly fine and he’s alive. The plan had worked, and all that pain and all those sleepless nights had paid off and-

 

“You won’t believe what happened, oh my god! So, like, remember when we were in space? And I was starting to feel bad? Maybe I ate something weird, I don’t know. I just know everything felt like it was going ashy and then I had this really weird dream, but I woke up, and Dr. Strange said we had to come here, and did you know we’re in Wakanda?! That’s where the princess is from! And she’s so pretty in person, but of course you know, you’ve been here for-umph!”

 

The rambling peters off to a slow trickle and Tony buries his face in Peter’s shoulder, breathing in deep, breathing in the kid. He’s solid and real. He’s really here. He doesn’t care if he cries now. He doesn’t care that he’s hugging him like his life depends on it. He’s back and that’s all that really matters.

 

“Mr. Stark…” Peter says, when he finally finds it in him to pull back. “Hey…it’s okay. I’m here.” He smiles and Tony’s eyes brim over before he can bother to stop it.

 

“I’m so sorry, Pete,” Tony rasps out, his voice rusty and pained. “God, I’m so sorry.”

 

Peter shakes his head and smiles. “It’s fine! I’m alright. I mean, it’s apparently been three years though? Holy cow! May is gonna be _so_ mad at me.”

 

Tony frowns, then swallows. “You mean it didn’t seem that way to you?”

 

Peter shakes his head and something rocks the palace hard enough that they both scoot over sideways. Tony nearly crumples, but Peter holds him tight and then lowers him to a chair. “Like I said, it felt like I’d fallen asleep and I thought I had a weird dream. Everything was golden and hazy and there were a lot of different people there and we all kind of just waited. But it wasn’t for long. I don’t know, felt like a few hours.” Peter frowns, brushes damp hair from Tony’s brow, and sits back a little. “Mr. Stark, you need to lie back down.”

 

Tony grimaces as he moves to stand. Though the pain had dulled, he still felt out of sorts and woozy and he hated how dependent he was on Peter to eve get out the chair. But he had a job to finish. He couldn’t let them fight without him.

 

“I need to get my suit.”

 

“Uh…I can’t…um-“

 

“Pete. Get my suit.” Tony stumbles back into Shuri’s bedroom and presses his palm against the reactor on his chest, the light a bright, steady blue. “It’s in my room, a few doors down the corridor. Take a left, then go about halfway and then another left and-“

 

“Mr. Stark. Tony, I can’t.” Peter swallows and he looks so apologetic. “She said not to let you out until everything is over.” Tony blinks stupidly until he understands exactly what he was being told. And then he growls and whirls around to head for the door.

 

“Gotta do every damned thing myself,” he hisses, resolve giving him the energy to stumble forward. “I don’t care what she said, I have to get down there!” But he’s not going anywhere, it seems, because the door refuses to budge and he can feel the imperceptible pull of a force shield surrounding the room. Even so, he pulls the door again, and then again, until he kicks futilely and leans his forehead against it with a whine.

 

“The princess…um, the queen, she’s still queen you know. Yeah, she said not to let you go anywhere right now.”

 

“Yeah, yeah. So you’ve said.” He hates that he sounds so contrite about it, but he can’t help it. And then his throat clogs because Shuri had met Peter and he had no idea how that had gone.

 

“Wait. You said she told you-“

 

“She said you can’t leave this room. She told me to come check on you when I got the chance, but I didn’t get to ask her when that would be. She took off with these things on her hands and these wings—they were really cool, by the way—and she’s down there with her brother and Mr. Thor and Captain Rogers and-“

 

“She’s on the battlefield?!” It comes out as a screech. He fumbles with the door again, but it refuses to budge and he bangs on it in terrified frustration. His pretty baby was outside fighting and he wasn’t there to make sure she was okay.

 

“I’m sorry.” He really does sound sorry about it, so Tony sighs and reaches out and wraps an arm around Peter’s shoulder in apology. “I’m sure she’s alright, though. And you really do need to rest, Mr. Stark. You don’t look too well and I don’t want anything to happen to you.” Peter pulls Tony back to the bed and flops him down on it, his mouth pressed into a thin line and his eyes searching Tony’s. And Tony wonders what Peter knows.

 

_Does everyone know now?_

 

“What happened?”

 

“A lot happened, kid. You’ll have to be more specific.”

 

“I mean,” he starts, stumbling over his words, “with you and…and Shuri? Like, what’s going on with that cause I thought you were with Ms. Pepper and-“

 

Peter cuts off and glances toward the balcony, where a glowing missile seems aimed directly at them and Tony holds his breath until something or someone shoots it down and it explodes like fireworks in the sky.

 

“Pete.”

 

“I can’t, Mr. Stark. I promised her I wouldn’t let you and…”

 

Tony shakes his head and groans, but waves his hand and slumps back beneath the covers.

 

“I’ve gotta get back, but look, when we win, I’ll come in and we can talk, okay?”

 

Tony almost laughs at how placating Peter was being. It was as if the roles had been reversed. And he’s too tired to argue, too grateful to know the boy was alive, so he nods and pats his arm and watches as Peter swoops on the mask and swings out the balcony doors.

 

And for a moment, he does rest. His eyes dart back and forth between the door and the commotion outside, to his hands, calloused and shaking. He draws in breath after breath and smooths his hands across his heated skin, up the veins of his arms, to a sore spot right in the middle of his bicep. He winces as he presses down on the wound where the serum had gone in and soothes the red spot with his thumb.

 

He makes up his mind.

 

Of course, her security systems are far vaster than mostly anything he’s ever come in contact with. Of course, he has difficulty even navigating how the barrier works, and he curses as each attempt to override the passcodes and breach the system goes without fruition. But he’s never been the type to give up so he keeps trying until eventually, angry and almost at the end of his rope, something snaps and the barrier stops the slight thrumming and the door opens softly.

 

Tony stares down the corridor and it’s so dark and still that it terrifies him. All the commotion outside contrasts with how empty the big palace is right now. Ramonda and the elders and the young children and sick were probably several feet underground in the safehold they’d been taken to during the first battle. And it dawns on him, as he tries for a jog down the corridor, that if Shuri really had wanted to keep him out of all this, she’d have sent him unconscious down there. Resolution takes hold and his steps grow surer and surer until he’s at his room, typing in the passcode, and slipping into the warm, dark room to grab his suit.

 

It’s not where he’d left it. He searches beneath the bed, and in the closet, the bathroom, even under the covers of his crumpled sheets. There’s nothing there at all and he curses loudly, slamming his fist weakly into the wooden desk beside the bed.

 

A syringe rolls from around a box of tissues and beside it, a long necklace of bead and bone, and he holds his breath as he picks it up, first unsure, and then, with purpose.

 

The serum is first. He hisses in pain as the medicine courses through his veins and stings like hell, but the second the fluid gets into his bloodstream he feels it. It’s almost agonizing at first, and then intoxicating, a heady feeling, like being hooked up to a battery and jolted with electricity. He gasps loudly, clenching his fists in the sheets and grunting until the sensation wears down. For a long minute, he sits at the edge of the bed and closes his eyes until his breathing evens and the aches and creaks in his body melt away like clouds. He almost laughs, he feels so good. He hasn’t felt like this in _years_.

 

Vigor renewed, he gets up from the bed and slides the dark, cool beads of the necklace between his fingers and palms the triangular bit of bone that dangles from it. Wherever his suit is, and whatever Shuri had done with it, it’s in this necklace. He slips it over his head and the bone falls just to where his reactor lies, then attaches as if it were a magnet. But nothing happens and he’s not sure how to get this thing started.

 

“C’mon, c’mon, what do I do with this thing?”

 

He taps the bone, the beads, twists and turns the necklace and talks to it, but nothing. “Go go gadget Iron Man?” he says, and then snorts out a chuckle. “God, she probably doesn’t even know what Inspector Gadget is.” More grumbling, an extensive search of the almost invisible tech that held it together, and he still was at a loss. Tony sits back and sighs, cognizant of how much time he’s wasting trying to get the suit to even activate. Maybe he’d have to go down there and find Shuri and get her to get this thing started because nothing he did was working.

 

“Fuckin’ hell, pretty baby, you couldn’t have left me some-”

 

The blue of his arc reactor begins to brighten, blindingly, and the necklace feels as though it’s vibrating. The bone and reactor combine and colors sweep across his skin until the glow in his chest beams purple instead of blue. A whispering sensation encases his entire body until he’s covered, head to toe, in gleaming red metal. But there’s purple thrumming through the body of the suit and the texture is different, lighter and less bulky so that it feels as if he’s barely wearing anything.

 

“Holy shit,” he whispers in awe, catching sight of his reflection in her floor length mirror. “Holy fuckin’ shit.”

 

It’s a work of a master and he’s honored she’d thought to make him something so amazing. He wonders at the weaponry she probably has this thing outfitted in and at just the thought of repulsors, they’re primed and ready to fire. A grin curls around his mouth and out of habit he thinks of FRIDAY; to his delight, she answers.

 

“Long time, no see, boss,” the A.I. quips. “Good to have you on board.”

 

“What’s this thing got going for it, FRIDAY?” He felt like a kid playing around in a spaceship.

 

“Advanced repulsor responses, upgraded defense shields, a better temperature control system. She didn’t just upgrade you, she completely refitted everything. The one thing she didn’t touch was me.”

 

“You sound almost impressed.”

 

“I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t, and you didn’t program me to lie.”

 

He laughs and opens the door to the balcony, scoping the battle below him. It was a mish mash of anyone who’d ever fought with or even against the Avengers, though he didn’t see Nebula and couldn’t make out Shuri. Even Rhodey was out there, gleaming like a silver bullet as he worked beside a giant Scott Lang. Peter was fighting beside the Valkyrie, and Thor had control of other end, alongside Rocket who lit the sky up with his gun.

 

“If this were anyone else, I’d be offended. Alright, showtime. How are we looking?”

 

He takes off with a burst of speed and nearly knocks himself off center. He’s got to get used to the lightness of the suit or he’ll be flailing around like a feather in the wind if he didn’t. But with a little adjustment, and FRIDAY’s help, he mowed down more than a few of the mad titan’s goons. It wasn’t enough; he needed to be in the heat of the action, so he sweeps past the Hulk and slides next to Thor who wields Stormbreaker as if he’d been born to do it.

 

“Stark!” he calls out, nodding almost excitedly. It has to be the adrenaline. “Glad to have you join us.”

 

“Figured you’d spend the rest of the night napping, actually,” Steve says from behind him, and Tony snorts. 

 

“And let you have all the fun? Fuck that. Talk to me. Where’s the son of a bitch we’re here for?”

 

Steve nods towards the middle of the battle, where the Hulk was slamming into Thanos over and over. It did nothing to slow him down, but Tony used the distraction to his advantage, sending waves of vibranium fueled power in the titan’s direction. He was rewarded for his efforts with a bone jarring slam to the ground, and an ugly purple face glaring over him.

 

“And here I’d thought you’d actually come to your senses, Stark. You of all people should know you can’t win.”

 

“You don’t sound so sure,” he grits out, grasping at Thanos’ giant, crushing hand. The suit warms under the pressure, but it doesn’t crack or break and pushing him back gets easier as he applies more force. “You a little scared, actually. Green around the gills.” Another slam but this one he’d been anticipating and he braces himself, thinking quickly so that another burst of energy streams from his reactor, the bright purple light connecting with Thanos’ skin until he howls and tosses Tony almost halfway across the battlefield.

 

He hisses as his body lands with a slide, but he shakes it off and moves to attack again. But before he can move he hears a yell, one that sounds far too familiar for his comfort, and he lifts his head to search the sky until he sees her. She wields her blasters with precision, picking of this alien and that, and one of her blasts tears through the right side of the ugly creature’s torso. It takes a moment for him to realize it, but she’s got wings to keep her in the air and she glides over to take down another, and another, until she’s a blur of firepower and beauty.

 

But she’s caught from behind and he can’t scream loud enough to warn her. It happens in slow motion. One moment, he’s watching her soar like an eagle above the fray, aiming for the screeching alien filth attacking them and the next, she’s dropping like a stone, screaming, her wings on fire and her face wide eyed and terrified. He’s frozen for a second, horror and fear nearly overriding the instinct to protect, but something knocks him sideways and he jolts into action, moving fast as memories of not catching Rhodey spurring him on.

 

She falls and falls and he goes faster and faster, but it’s not fast enough. And he’s horrified, for one solid second, that he isn’t going to catch her, that no one will. But over the chaos, there’s the beating of large wings, and a powerful, silver white horse clears the smoke and clouds just as Shuri falls, catching her effortlessly before landing in a clearing near the tree line. Tony’s whole body screams in relief, and the grinning face of Brunhilde reaches behind her to pull the princess upright.

 

“She’s alright now, Stark, I’ve got her!” the Valkyrie yells, hands cradling the scared, shaking young woman. “You’re fine, darling, Stardust caught you.” Shuri lets out a hard breath and her eyes close as she holds on tight to Brun’s middle, unwilling to let go at first. But then Tony’s hands search her for any injury, the smoking wings behind her sparking as they burn out, and he rips them from her back unceremoniously to keep her from catching alight. He gives Brun a look of absolute gratitude.

 

“I owe you,” he breathes and Brun’s smile is almost gentle. It’s the first time he’s seen anyone look at the two of them without judgement or confusion. “Whatever you want, name it.”

 

“Chocolate wine!” she says almost instantly. “The really good Sakaarian kind.” And with a wink, she and Stardust take off into the sky as Shuri nestles in Tony’s arms, safe behind an undamaged copse of trees.

 

“Hey.”

 

He searches her face and smooths his gloved hands over her skin, little burns and scars here and yonder. She almost smiles, though the fear still has a hold of her.

 

“I was wondering when you’d break out of jail,” she says, laughing a bit as she does. It’s right on the edge of hysterics, a mirror of how he feels and of how his heart hammers in his chest painfully. “I see you found your suit.”

 

“You made me a fuckin’ suit, pretty baby.” He can’t stop the pride and awe from coming through.

 

“I did.” She grins for real this time and grasps his forearms and he has never loved her so much than right now. “I’d tell you about the upgrades to it, you know, how much better I made it, but we don’t have much time.”

 

There was still too much to do and Thanos still wasn’t budging and Tony knew this fight was far from over. Even so, he only needed a minute. That’s all he wanted, one minute alone.

 

“Right, but you gotta tell me something. What in the entire hell possessed you to come out here?!” he asks, and she rolls her eyes.

 

“Did you really think I’d let that purple bastard destroy my country while I could do something about it?”

 

“This isn’t your kinda fight!”

 

“I’m doing just fine!” she insists, though the memory of falling has to still ripple through her body. She glances up at the smoke and fire around her and shudders. “Or I was. That thing damaged my Bast damned wings, and I swear, if Brun hadn’t sliced through his middle, I’d be up there right now pummeling him to death!”

 

She looks like a wild cat, all big eyes and trembling lip, but the claws are out and the fear is ebbing away into anger and adrenaline. He grins and holds her shoulders and pulls her close, presses her to his chest, and breathes in deep. It smells of sulfur and blood, but thank god most of that isn’t hers.

 

“Do me a favor, huh?”

 

“What?” She sounds so annoyed. His queen is coming back out of hiding and he loves it. “I built you a new suit, that’s enough favors to last you a lifetime.”

 

“Don’t fuckin’ die on me.” That’s all he needs for right now. Maybe later he can ask for more, but all he needs is for her to be okay when this is all said and done.

 

Shuri stills and blinks up at him, her mouth opened, her face slack until it softens the same time her eyes do and he almost breaks down and begs her to go down to the saferooms with her mother and their daughter. She wouldn’t listen if he did. And really, they needed all the help they could get. His pretty baby could hold her own in a fight; she was a panther, after all. He was just so scared. He could lose her or he could die and then where would his children be?

 

Shuri reaches nimble fingers up to thread through is beard, gritty and dirty, smearing the grime on his face as she does so. “I’ll be fine, Tony Stark. You promise that you won’t die on me.”

 

He scoffs. “I’m not the one who almost gave me a heart attack falling out the damn sky. Stay with Brun or Okoye or any of the others. I don’t want you alone anymore.”

 

“Fine. But you have to promise me.” Her voice grows a little desperate. “You haven’t promised me yet.”

 

“I can’t promise you that,” he says truthfully, because he can’t promise her that nothing will happen to him. There’s a very real possibility that he won’t make it off this battle field alive.

 

Shuri growls and glares at him like he’s an insolent child.

 

“Apparently, you have a death wish,” she mutters, shoving him hard as the battle rages around them. She moves to sweep past him but he grasps her arm and pulls her back to him, hoping to god she isn’t angry. He can’t have her angry, not right now.

 

“I’ve been known to flirt with it from time to time,” he says wryly, following her eyes as she scans the fight. “But not right now.”

 

She glances back up to him and searches his eyes for a moment. “What’s changed your mind?”

 

“You,” he breathes out, honest as ever, and he thinks he hears her breath hitch in her throat. “You, and baby girl, and…I need to see my Jude again, too, so…”

 

“Then you’ll keep your ass safe and sound out there and don’t do anything stupid-“

 

Something makes her stumble as she paces around the tree line, but she doesn’t seem to notice, her eyes focusing on his as if it’s the last time she’ll ever see him. He hopes, for the first time in weeks, that it isn’t.

 

“I’ll try.”

 

“ _Promise_.” She swallows hard and reaches out to him, her hands shaking as they do, and for a moment, everything stands still. There isn’t anything else in the world but he and her, a stillness surrounding them like fog, and he clasps her fingers between his. “You have to promise me, Tony Stark. I’m not going to explain to my daughter why her father didn’t make it out of this alive. I’m not.”

 

He smiles, in spite of how his skin prickles. “Fine,” he says, and watches as she visibly relaxes at his assurance. “I promise.”  When he pulls her close, she melds into him, resting her chin on his chest and looking up at him as if he holds all the answers. “You sure this is about Than Than and not about you?” He can’t help but tease her and he almost laughs when her eyes narrow.

 

“Shut up,” she grumbles. But there’s a softness there that he cherishes and he mentally files the expression on her face away. And when she leans up, on tiptoe, and pulls his head down to hers, he offers no resistance. There’s death and destruction all around them and a mad titan trying to destroy them all, but he doesn’t care. The only thing in the universe at that instance is he and her and the sweetest of her desperate kiss.

 

He pulls away, reluctant, and she moves around him, a little off balance but mostly unharmed. She clears the trees and sucks in air as she prepares to fly back into the battle and he does the same. Tony lets the mask of his suit cover his face and with one look back to his princess, he goes to where he’s needed most.

 

* * *

 

Their luck shifts and moves over the course of the battle, until Tony doesn’t know what what is up and down. By the time the army is mostly defeated and it’s Thanos and a few of his goons alone, the Titan has turned the tide. He’s got the upper hand because he’s still got the stones in the cracked, burned gauntlet and there’s no one to stop him from snapping his fingers and wiping them all out now.

 

“Silly, arrogant, irritating creatures,” he rants, stalking towards the still standing. There’s not many of them left. Clint holds Wanda in his arms, blood pouring from a wound in her head. Scott and Rhodey hold each other up behind a shaking, stunned Sam Wilson. And Bucky Barnes stands defiant, his gun in his hand and the gleam of murder in his eye. Tony digs his fingers into the dirt as blood drips into his eye and his head spins. He’d been tossed around entirely too many times to count, and though the serum still held and the suit kept him mostly in one piece, he was running low on stamina. Even Steve pants doggedly, but he glares at Thanos without wavering, hands at the ready to attack. The Titan mocks them, their stubbornness, their resilience. And out the corner of his eye, he sees the subtle motion of Steve’s fingers, the signal to move forward and grab the gauntlet. Stephen stands ready, hands up and eyes steady, and Thor clutches Stormbreaker with bated breath.

 

Shuri’s somewhere behind him, far away, close to the remaining Dora, so he has no distractions. There’s one goal and one purpose; get those stones before Thanos can act.

 

He’s faster than Tony expects him to be, because he moves to snap his fingers and Steve’s waving frantically, pushing up to swing the shield and give them all time to move. And Tony doesn’t know what happens, or how, because it’s a blur of blue and red and white and purple and black. It’s dark and the smoke is still thick and all he knows is the shield is sliced in half by the sword Thanos wields; he can’t see a thing, but he can hear Steve’s half scream, cut off by a gurgle, and his whole body runs cold.

 

And then Thanos snaps his fingers and Tony panics.

 

But nothing happens, at least not at that moment. In the mayhem, he crawls across the ground and cradles Steve to his chest, blood pouring from a deep gash in his torso. Tony knows already that Steve isn’t going to make it out of this alive. It’s a pain he has never felt before, a strange, burning regret and he wheezes out a cry when Steve’s fingers grasp for his hand to hold.

 

“Did he…” He can scarcely talk, though he tries. Tony doesn’t know what to tell him because Thanos is moving toward them, angry and insane, the gauntlet still on his hand. He keeps snapping, but nothing happens still and it makes him angrier and angrier. And Tony is going to die too, right now, with Steve Rogers in his arms because the shields on his suit are disabled and the sword swings down, almost in slow motion. A blur of silver metal and red slips between he and the sword, clanging down sideways as the blow is deflected.

 

“Not on my watch!” Thor roars, giving Tony time to push back with his heels and pull Steve with him. It’s difficult with a man so heavy in his arms, but he keeps going until the two of them are out of the clear. Frantic footsteps thunder behind him; a hand clutches him roughly and tries to pull out the way, but Steve holds tight.

 

“No! No, let him-” He coughs up dark blood and shakes and Bucky Barnes and Sam Wilson are angry but they curl around him as Steve reaches for Tony.

 

“I’m sorry,” he says in a wheeze and Tony starts to cry. “I’m so sorry, I wish-”

 

Tony nods and wipes the mud from his face. “I am too. I know, me too. Just...for what it’s worth-”

 

The air around them crackle and freezes. Thor and Strange and Drax battle to keep Thanos back, and shiver runs up Tony’s spine as dark, maniacal laughter ripples across the carnage. Tony almost smiles. His eyes meet Steve’s and Steve grins, wide and beautiful and turns his head painfully to see.

 

“Dramatic son of a bitch,” Steve says and Tony chuckles, and cries still, and Sam Wilson’s hands collide with his as their fingers press to Steve’s pulse.

 

“Full tilt diva, I told you,” Tony murmurs.

 

Loki, blue and terrible and taller than Tony remembers, comes barreling from the sky and shakes the ground with him. Nebula and a green woman that Tony can only guess is her sister follow beside him and then, the dead begin to rise with red eyes and flaking skin and a beautiful woman with terrible black eyes starts to sing. It makes Tony’s skin ache and his head feels like it’ll burst, so he lowers his head and watches Steve’s face just as Natasha slides into the mud beside them.

 

“Oh, god, what happened?! Steve, look at me, okay?” She reaches out to touch the gash in his chest and curses harshly, glancing first to Tony and then to Bucky. “We’ve got to get him to the princess’ lab. She can save him, right?” Nat looks to Tony desperately. “Right, Tony, she can...she-”

 

Bucky pulls Natasha close and her hands join the ones that grasp Steve. There’s the last showdown between Thanos and those he’d hurt the most but Tony pays it no attention. He keeps his eyes on Steve Roger’s blue ones until the smile slips and the light begins to fade. Sam holds his breath and Natasha wails but there’s no use.

 

He’s gone, fingers limp and pulse stilled and Tony feels as though everything inside him has been drained. Light dances around the corners of his vision while Thanos is rendered useless, the hand holding the gauntlet sliced off and his body pinned to the spot. It’s over now; the army around them finish off the rest of the alien horde and the daughters of Thanos get vengeance for all the years of abuse they’d suffered.

 

Tony Stark lifts his eyes towards the sky as dawn starts to clear and whispers up a prayer for Captain America.

 

 

* * *

 

 

The funeral is on a beautiful, sunny December morning.

 

He doesn’t feel like he should be here, but he refuses to give anyone the pleasure of seeing him run. He’s a coward, he knows that, but he owes Steve this much. He stands still and keeps his eyes on the ground as the Wakandans give Steve burial rites; an unprecedented honor for an American man who had fought to save so many and given his last to protect them all. Fingernails dig into his palms and the thrumming of blood rushes through his body in anger, in disbelief, in grief. He felt bereft, though he didn’t really know why.

 

Maybe because something had died before it could truly begin. Maybe because there was so much still unsaid between them both.

 

 _Because I could have loved you, I_ **_would_ ** _have loved you, but didn’t._

 

It doesn’t feel fair to cry so he doesn’t. Beside him, Bruce stands with his arms crossed and his eyes glaring out towards the bier where the body rests, silent and unmoving and wrapped in fine linen. Jane wraps an arm around him and holds him, and Tony longs for the touch of someone, anyone, most of all Shuri, but she’s at the front of the line in ceremonial mourning attire. Tears stream down her face and in her arms, Thandi naps, unaware that her uncle Steve had died to give her a future.

 

None if it made sense, but this was their reality now, a world without Captain America.

 

 _Captain America is dead_ , Tony thinks bitterly. _Long live Captain America._

 

T’Challa’s voice booms across the large crowd of mourners, tinged with sadness at the loss of a man he’d considered a friend. The eulogy is beautiful and moving and there isn’t a dry eye to be seen. Tony catches Rhodey’s eye over someone’s shoulder, and he holds it for as long as he’s able, until the unrelenting, harsh glare is too much to handle.

 

Pepper hadn’t called to ask about him and he’s too tired to feel sad about it.

 

When the rites are done and Steve’s body is wrapped and placed in his coffin to be shipped back to New York, Tony leaves the crowd and takes the long way back to his room. He wants nothing more than to pour himself a glass of whiskey and sink into bed and sleep, but he knows he won’t. He can’t get the sound of metal being sliced in half or the rasping, wet cough of Steve’s last breaths out his head. He keeps seeing the blood, and swears it still lingers on his hands and no matter how hard he scrubs or for how long, he’ll never get it off.

 

The corridors are quiet, but not empty and no one bothers him, but they stare. There’s whispers about his relationship with the princess, and rumors of a love triangle between she and he and Steve. Blessedly, no one questions Thandi’s paternity, but he knows there’s bound to be some who wonder. They’ll all probably know in a few more months anyway. As she grows, his girl looks less like the spitting image of her mother, and more like him. Part of him wants to rip the metaphorical band aid off and just spill it all, but he won’t do that to Shuri if she wasn’t ready.

 

He hadn’t seen much of her since the battle. He remembers being on his knees as the smoke cleared and watched with wide eyes as Loki took the gauntlet and destroyed the stones once and for all. He remembers her small hands pulling him out the muck and mud, but she’d drifted from his side to embrace her brother tearfully. Bruce claims she’d cried when she saw T’Challa rising from the spot he’d been ashed; Bruce also carefully avoided her reaction to seeing Bucky Barnes again.

 

But when Barnes had pulled Shuri into his arms and kissed her cheek and held her close, Tony had his answer. There was no use in denying the truth. Steve had been right. She would choose Bucky and he would be cast aside like the mistake he undoubtedly had been.

 

The pain is acute, but he smothers it down and tries not to think about it. The less he knows, the better.

 

He takes his time getting to his room, lost in his thoughts, so that he almost misses the two of them, Bucky and Shuri, arguing in hushed and tensed voices outside her bedroom door. He can’t make out what they’re saying from here and he almost doesn’t want to know, but something pulls him closer and he creeps, unseen, toward the two of them.

 

“It doesn’t matter!” she says, glaring up at him fiercely. “He loved her, that’s all that counts, and that’s the end of it.”

 

Bucky shakes his head and Tony almost feels sorry for him. “No, no you said you’d wait for me...and you did this? With my best friend? Tell me that baby isn’t Steve’s, Shuri, and I’ll drop the whole thing.”

 

Tony steps back and waits for her to confess. _No, she isn’t Steve Rogers' daughter. She’s Tony Stark’s girl. The one good thing to come out of all of this mess._ But Shuri never says anything so he pulls back and turns around the other way.

 

He doesn’t get two paces before he nearly runs into the king, watching the same argument curiously. Tony is hesitant to say anything other than a quick, terse greeting, but T’Challa’s hand catches his arm and holds him still.

 

“The rumors,” he begins, and Tony draws in a sharp breath. “Is it true that the captain fathered my sister’s daughter?”

 

Tony would lie to anyone else were he asked, but he can’t lie to the king. He lifts his eyes to T’Challa’s and doesn’t have to say a word. T’Challa knows. He pulls him down the hall anyway.

 

“Walk with me, Mr. Stark.”

 

“Uh, yeah. Sure.” He swallows and smooths his shirt down his chest for something to do with his hands. He can’t get the image of Shuri rounding on Bucky out of his head, and he’s almost out the palace and into the bright sunshine of the courtyard before he knows it. The king doesn’t say anything at first. He stands still beside Tony and looks out over the landscape as the Dora Milaje hover behind them. It unsettles him, until Tony has to make some sort of noise or he’ll lose what’s left of his mind.

 

“She–and by she, I mean the baby...”

 

“Thandiwe?”

 

Tony nods. “Shuri says she named her after your grandmother.”

 

Thandiwe had been named after two amazing women, he’d found out; Shuri’s grandmother Thandiwe had been the reason the lab on Mount Bashenga had been built in the first place. And then of course there was Maria, the heart of the Stark family, who’d been over half the reason Howard was considered as brilliant as he’d been, and had given Thandi her middle name. He wonders if T’Challa knows about that part. He wonders if the king knows his niece’s full name and the history of her conception.

 

He turns his head for a quick glance at the handsome face and realizes that T’Challa knows everything.

 

“Did she tell you?” he works up the nerve to say.

 

“She did.” T’Challa’s voice hardens. “I entrusted Captain Rogers with the protection of my sister and mother were something to happen to me. I gave him my trust to keep her safe and to guide her as she would undoubtedly need. And I suppose he did his best.”

 

“He did.” Tony remembers the way that fist felt across his face and the taste of blood in his mouth. “He did everything he could to keep her on her throne.”

 

“And for that, I will be eternally grateful to him.” His voice softens a bit at that, but when he speaks again, it could shatter glass. “You are not Captain Rogers. You are an intruder who preyed on the vulnerability of a young woman for your own pleasures.”

 

Tony opens his mouth to say something because this wasn’t going in the right direction, but he’s cut off as T’Challa leans in close and pins him to the spot.

 

“There are charges of indecency and coercion being brought against you.”

 

“What?”

 

“Rumors may be just that, but I have found that when some persists, then there is usually truth behind them. What is the American saying?”

 

“Where there’s smoke, there’s fire.” He blurts out but he rushes forward, because now he’s angry. “Yeah, that’s good and everything but did you bother asking your sister what happened? Did you ask her if she was coerced into anything? Ask her.”

 

“Mr. Stark-”

 

“No, no, look, with all due respect...I never did anything she didn’t want me to. I never touched her if she didn’t want me to.” He buzzes like an angry wasp and paces across the courtyard with shaking hands. “That baby? Yeah, maybe she was conceived out of more lust than love, and maybe she should have never happened. I still had a ring on my finger when…” He trails off and shakes his head. “I never raped any goddamn body, and I swear it on everything that I never raped Shuri.”

 

T’Challa’s face is priceless, a mixture of shock and incredulity. “I never said you _raped_ her, Mr. Stark. No one has.”

 

“But that’s what you’re implying! That’s what they’re all saying, huh? That Tony Stark came in and took advantage of a sweet, sad little girl and knocked her up on top of it, right? Or, or, no, I’ll tell you what they’re saying. They’re saying she turned to good old Captain Rogers for comfort and I plotted to rip the two of them apart.” He laughs then, almost in a panic and rubs at his eyes. “You weren’t here. None of them know, and you don’t understand, and I have done a lot of fucked up shit in the last three years, but I never-”

 

T’Challa holds up his hand and Tony stops his rambling, angry tirade for long enough to notice the Queen Mother joining them in the courtyard. He bites his lip and holds his head high as he can, watches as she embraces her son tenderly, and turns to Tony.

 

“Mr. Stark is many things,” she says in that smooth voice of hers, her eyes boring into his own with blatant intent. “But a rapist he is not.” Ramonda sighs and clasps her son’s hand and pulls him back toward the double doors. “Come. We must speak with Shuri about everything that has happened. It would be wise to get her side of things before we proceed with any charges.”

 

T’Challa nods, spares one more look to Tony, and takes his leave as quietly as he’d found him.

 

* * *

 

 

He’s lost in his own mind for the rest of the day, anger and frustration and grief swirling around like a toxic cocktail. Pepper calls just as he settles into bed, after a long bath, a hard cry, and a few shots. He should be drunk, but apparently part of the serum still swirls around in his blood, increasing his tolerance so that he’s barely even buzzed. It’s not even enough to take the edge off, but he doesn’t want to be drunk for this. He’s got to at least appear coherent if they're going to have some sort of conversation.

 

She lets him talk to Jude for a few minutes, and he’s a rambling, sad mess on the line as his son babbles and gurgles, then yawns, his bedtime fast approaching. Pepper puts the phone on speaker and tucks Jude into bed, reads him a story with Tony still on the line, and he listens and drinks up every moment because he’s not sure if he’ll ever get to have this again. And then she’s back on the phone and her tone shifts from soothing and motherly to distant and cold.

 

“He told me,” she says, her voice near monotone and dry and that hurts worse than if she’d been yelling. For a moment he doesn’t understand what she’s referencing, so he stays quiet and waits, until she draws in a breath and her voice is hard as flint now.

 

“Jimmy saw her, Tony,” she says, pushing. “The baby. Said she looks just like you.”

 

Fuck.

 

There was a part of him, a treacherous part, that never wanted to tell Pepper about Thandi. He’d kept it secret from her this long; why bring his daughter into the mess he’d made? But he owed it to Pepper to be honest. He’d been lying for so long now. He could at least come clean about this.

 

“I didn’t know, either, actually.”

 

“Bullshit,” she says with a snort, and he doesn’t correct her at first, because maybe she’s due another rant about his duplicity. “You mean to tell me you came home and didn’t know the girl was pregnant?”

 

He clears his throat, and twists his hands into the sheets. 

 

“She’d scheduled an abortion,” he says simply. "I left before it could happen; I assumed she went through with it as planned.” Tony’s voice is almost as monotone as Pepper’s but mostly because he’s too tired to cry anymore. “So, no, I didn’t know there would be a baby when she opened Wakanda back up. I didn’t even know if there’d be a Shuri, at this point.”

 

“But you were hoping,” Pepper says, and it’s angry but curious and masochistic, too.

 

“I was.” He refuses to lie about that. “I honest to god hoped and...well. Yeah.”

 

There’s silence on the other end for a long while, and then Tony realizes Pepper is crying and he wants to tear himself apart. _Look at what you’ve done to her._ He expects she’ll tell him to never speak to her again and keep him from seeing his son and he’s terrified of that thought, because even if he had no place in that house anymore, he had to see Jude. It would destroy what was left of him if he couldn’t.

 

“Tony. Come home.”

 

He definitely wasn’t expecting that.

 

“What?”

 

“Please,” she says, in a half whisper. “We can fix this. We can...we can make something work, maybe, I don’t know. I just...I miss you. Jude misses you so much, he looks for you.”

 

Tony’s heart begins to crack and he leans his head against his hand, draws in air and stifles the sob in his chest.

 

“I don’t deserve to come back,” he says, because he really doesn’t. “I don’t deserve you. I don’t deserve any of you.” He doesn’t deserve Shuri, either, and not Thandi and not this room in Wakanda. He deserves what Steve Rogers had gotten and he wonders for the millionth time in three days why it wasn’t him. Why? It wasn’t fair.

 

“You don’t,” she says, “but I want you home.”

 

“Pep…”

 

“Nope.” Her voice strengthens again and the resolve returns and he blinks away tears. “You don’t get to call me that. Not yet. Not for a long time. I don’t know if I can forgive you right now. I don’t know when I’ll be able to. But your home is here, and your son needs you. So come back.”

 

When she hangs up he stares out at the darkened windows and holds his phone limply, the sound of his sweet boy’s little voice still echoing in his ears. He wishes there wasn’t a conflict in his chest right now. He wishes there was an easy answer to all of this. But he knows, without a shadow of a doubt, that if there was a chance he could still be Shuri’s, he’d take it. He hates himself for it and he wallows in that hatred, until his hands cramp around the phone and he’s tired of sitting, sleepless, in a cold bed.

 

The palace still bustles even this late at night as the excess number of guests that linger wander the halls and corridors. He eases out his door and takes a straight shot to Shuri’s, and his luck holds out long enough to get there and to knock. He feels restless and anxious and when she opens the door, in her sleeping gown and with her hair down, she moves aside wordlessly upon seeing the look on his face.

 

“I need to know,” he tells her, and she sighs, because she already knows what he means. She’s quiet after, and he lets her collect her thoughts. She’s silent for what feels like forever and he leans against the foot of her bed and distracts himself with the pattern of her lush rug and the random baby bottle that sat on her desk. She catches his line of vision and takes the bottle in hand, tapping her nails against the plastic in rhythm.

 

“If I said I didn’t know-”

 

“Don't do this to me,” he grits out. She presses her lips tight and tilts her chin up and he feels a slow, creeping dread settle in his belly.

 

“Do you know what you’re asking of me?” she finally says. He hates how strident her voice is, though she keeps it low so as not to wake Thandi in the nursery next door. “I can’t just pretend everything is okay and that all will be well if I run away with you.”

 

Tony frowns. “I never said...what made you think I even wanted you to leave?”

 

She opens her mouth and then closes it and throws her hands up. “You have a family, Tony!” she exclaims. “Do you really plan to just abandon your son?”

 

“No. God, no, I wasn’t…” He swallows. His stomach lurches because he realizes that it definitely seems like he'd been planning that. Maybe not outright, but in some roundabout way, he’d have given up on his marriage and left his son in America so he could stay with Shuri and his daughter. And the painful realization that he can’t have it both ways strikes him so hard he has to sit.

 

“I’m not even in a position to think about…” She shakes her head and trails off and then she laughs, and it’s empty. “Bucky.” He hates the way she says his name. She still breathes it like it means something. “Bucky is convinced he can fix it all. Says if I just give him time, we can...I don't know. I don't know what he thinks he can do.” She crosses her arms across her chest. “He thinks Thandi is Steve’s and he owes it to him to help take care of his little girl and I don’t have the heart to tell him he’s wrong.”

 

“So you’re gonna let him think my daughter is a dead man’s?”

 

Her eyes flash with anger and he regrets his words the second they pass his lips. “Don’t you dare. _Don’t._ You have no room to talk about hiding anything!”

 

“I didn’t want to say anything,” he tries to argue. “I didn’t know if you wanted-”

 

“You didn’t ask.”

 

Tony clamps his mouth shut and pushes away from the bed. He goes to the balcony doors and traces the outline of the mountain in the distance with his fingernail against the glass. The motion is monotonous until his temper cools and his chest stops aching so much. He’s got a possible second chance waiting for him in New York and all he’d have to do tomorrow is go home and take it. But his heart wanted the woman behind him, the girl queen, and he turns to find her with shoulders hunched and her body shaking and he’s so angry at himself because now he’s made her cry.

 

“C’mon Kitten,” he says softly, moving to where she stands. She lets him take her in his arms and he holds her close, breathes in the warm scent of her, of her soap, of the oils on her hair and skin. “Don’t cry, please.”

 

“Either way I turn, I lose.” She scrubs her face and bites her bottom lip to keep from crying more, but it’s no use. Fat tears roll down her face and she lets the sob roll out her throat. “I’ve got people who think I’m a traitor to my own country. I’ve got a brother who looks at me and the baby I had as if I were a stranger. My own mother thinks I’m damaged or ruined. And Bucky…”

 

“Fuck him,” he growls, low and deep in his throat. “He’s a damned fool if he’s actually angry at you.” _It wasn’t your fault,_ he wants to lie to her and say. But it was her fault as much as it was his, and there was no running from that truth.

 

“He’s not angry at me,” she says, her laugh painful and barbed. “He’s angry that he survived and Steve didn’t and he thinks...he thinks I never loved him and-”

 

“Did you?”

 

She blinks and stares at him. “I don’t know anymore. I really don’t.”

 

Tony reaches up and cups her cheek, wipes the tears though they keep coming, and pulls from something deep inside him. He thinks it’s his heart, bloody and messy in his hand, and he holds it out to her to see. He knows, though it hurts to, that she won’t take it. She can’t. But she at least needs to know.

 

“Do you love _me?_ ” he finally asks, and she draws in a breath so tight, it could snap. “Because I love you.” He swallows hard, and gets on his knees and holds her close to him. Her fingers thread through his hair and he digs his fingers into her hips until she hisses. “I love you so fucking much and I want you so bad. I want you and I want our daughter and I want...I want you to meet my son and live with me for as long as you want.”

 

“Tony,” she starts, but he keeps going, and rambling, and hurting himself.

 

“I want to give you everything. My heart and my soul and my life.”

 

“Tony, I can’t,” she whispers, and he buries his face in her belly and lets the hurt wash over him. “I can’t.”

 

They stand that way for a long time, until his knees start to ache and her legs wobble from standing too long. She’s a whisper of a ghost as she moves and kneels to pull him up.

 

“Come to bed with me,” she says, eyes clear and her face passive. “Change my mind, Tony Stark.” She slips the straps of her gown off her shoulders and reveals miles of smooth skin, marred every so often by a nick here and a scrape there. There’s bruises on her ribs and hips, a nasty yellow thing underneath her collarbone, and a cut on her right thigh. Tony reaches out with shaking hands and touches her, the warmth of her skin filling him with temporary solace as he leans down to kiss her bruises.

 

She whispers his name over and over as he nibbles on her flesh, and strokes her body, and nuzzles her skin. He pulls her to the bed and covers her, then pulls back to watch her face and she traces the lines in his eyes and the corners of his mouth as if she’s memorializing parts of him she may never see again.

 

“Kiss me,” she orders, and he obeys, softly and sweetly, until the warmth of her turns into an inferno and he’s drowning in her the way he always does. She’s still so sweet, though the taste is tinged with the bitterness of her tears and regret he can’t wash away with just a good fuck. Doesn’t mean he can’t try.

 

He makes love to her, truly and deeply and gently until she’s crying out his name muffled against his shoulder, her nails dragging down his sweaty back. She wraps her legs around him tighter and holds him closer, refusing to let him pull out or away. It feels like he’s chasing after something he can’t quite grasp, a melancholy sort of pleasure that throbs inside him after he makes her cum again and then again, and finally, follows her head first into the waves.

 

She breathes deep and buries her face into his hair, leans down to kiss him again, to touch his eyes and stroke the freckles on his nose. She kisses those too, and settles back into the bed, eyes heavy with the need to sleep. She never says a word, but he doesn’t need any. The silence is enough, nothing except the soft rustle of the baby monitor on the nightstand as Thandi sighs in her crib. He falls asleep, cradled against her side, her fingers entangled in his and for just a breath of a moment, right as he hovers between consciousness and unconsciousness, he thinks he hears her tell him she loves him, too.

 

* * *

 

Little feet wake him up, pressed into his face and wiggling against his nose. He huffs out a breath and he hears soft laughter when the tiny feet rear back and kick him square in the nose. His eyes pop open just as Thandi rolls over toward him and giggles, baby’s breath and long lashes, her sweet face the perfect thing to wake up to. Beside her, wrapped in blankets and with eyes so soft they hurt, is her mother. She reaches out to touch him, and he leans into her, squishes their daughter between them, and kisses her soundly.

 

“Morning.”

 

She hums and blinks in the barely there sunlight. “Morning. Sorry about the rude awakening. You were sleeping so well, too.”

 

Tony grins. “You’re not sorry.” Shuri snorts and rolls over, pushing her hair out the way as she sinks down back into the warm covers. He snuggles Thandi close and cherishes every soft little breath that she breathes across his cheek. “Neither is this one right here. Thanks for the wake up call, Bend it Like Beckham, I appreciate it.” He blows a raspberry to her bare tummy and she giggles and coos louder and if Tony had to define the word love, it would be this moment right here, in bed with Shuri and Thandi.

 

He’s quiet as he finishes waking and small fingers find his in the heap of blankets and pillows and twine between his own.

 

“T’Challa says they’re calling council in a few days.”

 

Tony scoffs. He doesn’t want to think about the stupid, trumped up charges against him, but he knows he’ll have to face them eventually. “They think I forced you into this.”

 

Shuri turns her head and there’s a fire behind her eyes that makes his heart so proud. “They’re morons. I told my brother that nothing we did was against my will. I told him everything you did was because I wanted you to.”

 

“Did he believe you?”

 

“I think so,” she says. Her eyes soften again as Thandi wiggles her chubby feet in the air. “He didn’t want to believe me...but he did. He asked about Than, too. About why I didn’t go through with the procedure.” She sighs and Tony reaches out to touch her face. He’d wondered that too. Her explanation of not having the time never made much sense.

 

“Same reason I didn’t want you to, huh?” he says and she smiles, a little bitter sweetly.

 

“I didn’t want to do it. I wanted her. I wanted her the moment I found out and...I thought I was doing the right thing, I thought-” She shakes her head and leans down to kiss her daughter, and Tony hopes she’s not crying again. Her tears hurt him more than anything.

 

“Hey. She’s here, okay? And she’s healthy and happy and she probably gave her Baba a bruise on his nose, she’s so strong.”

 

Shuri manages to smile and she regards him curiously. “You’re going to let her call you Baba?”

 

“Yeah. Might as well. I mean, that’s what I am, right? She’s Wakandan, too, even if her daddy’s a dirty American.” Shuri’s laugh makes up for the sadness that lingers around them. They settle into a comfortable quiet until Thandi begins to fuss for breakfast. Shuri sits up and gathers her in her arms, puts the baby to her breast, and begins to feed. Tony snuggles up behind them and kisses her shoulder and laughs when his daughter slurps and drinks greedily.

 

“Hungry little hippo.”

 

“Do not call my daughter a hippopotamus, Tony Stark,” Shuri says, trying to sound stern, but the gentleness of her tone gives her away. “Though she _is_ a greedy little thing. She eats as though I’ve never fed her in her life.”

 

“She definitely does not get that from me.”

 

“She doesn’t get it from me either.” Shuri pauses in mock contemplation and smiles. “We’ll blame it on her grandfather. Baba could eat a weeks worth of food in one sitting.”

 

The two of them chatter about little of nothing for a while, until Tony has to use the bathroom and Shuri needs to get dressed. She’s got so much to do; it’s a process to transfer the crown from one person to the other and there were briefings and meetings to attend, population issues to discuss, and matters of state that wouldn’t allow her to lay in bed with him all morning. She pulls her hair up as he rocks Thandi side to side, eliciting giggles and he sings, jaunty rock music until Shuri can’t help but laugh and try to sing along.

 

“I’ll be in meetings all day, probably,” she says, and he thinks she looks tired already. He wishes she didn’t have to deal with this right now, but she’d not be his Shuri if she ran away from her duty. “I’ll tell Dakuri not to worry about getting her today, if that’s alright.”

 

“Yeah,” he says with a grin. “I wanna watch her today.”

 

“Good.” She sucks in a breath and Tony gets an odd feeling in his gut, one that blooms into trepidation as she turns around. “You’re gonna have to stay put for right now.” Confusion must spread across his face because she sighs and looks at him with a mix of sympathy and irritation, though he gets the feeling it’s not for him. “My brother insists that you...remain under guard for the duration of the council process.”

 

“What?” He frowns. “How long will that take?”

 

“We’ve got a lot more things to handle than indecency charges, Tony, so...it may be days or weeks, even, I don’t know.”

 

“Shuri, what am I supposed to do then? Sit in my room with guards at the door and stare at the walls?” Her mouth tightens and he pulls back, tones down his voice, and tries again. “I could be helping here. Wakanda needs to rebuild and regroup and I’ve got a brain and a body that apparently wants to work like it’s twenty years younger. Let me help.”

 

She closes her eyes for a moment and shrugs. “My hands are tied, as of right now. I’m not queen anymore, Tony. If I were, you know I’d have you at my side, no question.” That eases his irritation, if only a little. “But think of it this way; you get a break to hang out with Than Than and access to the lab-”

 

“Oh yeah?”

 

“So maybe it’s not such a bad thing after all, huh?”

 

* * *

 

It really isn’t a bad thing, not the way he assumes it will be. He’s Thandi’s primary caregiver for almost a solid week and he doesn’t have to worry about seeing Bucky Barnes or Sam Wilson so that’s a plus. Shuri comes to visit when she can, bringing him lunch or dinner and pressing kisses to his mouth. At least she does in the first few days. He notices her pulling away sometime around day four, and it worries him but he doesn’t want to bother her over something he’s sure he’s just overthinking.

 

To fill his time, he spends most of his day in the lab and tinkers with the repairs on his suit and the wings she’d built. They’re far more advanced than anything he’s ever come up with and he finds himself in awe as always at her intelligence and imagination. It’s a joy to pick the pieces apart and then try to put them back together, stronger and better, as Thandi lies on her blanket and plays with her activity gym. He video chats Peter sometimes and takes solace in the fact that the boy really doesn’t care that much about the affair. He knows, as does everyone else at this point, but it’s not really a talking point. It’s just something that happened, that Pete doesn’t quite understand, and he laughs and talks with Tony as if three harrowing years hadn’t passed.

 

On day six, he gets a visitor, while Thandi takes her afternoon nap in the lab nursery. Natasha waits in the lobby of the lab with three Dora escorts, two of whom he knows stand outside and post guard. She looks tense and he has a bad feeling about this meeting, but he waves her inside and offers her a drink anyway.

 

“Coke? Sprite? Juice? I can make a smoothie or some coffee if you want.”

 

Nat stares at him disinterested and he sighs, sits at the desk, and waits.

 

“The hell were you thinking?” she asks. There’s a hurt in her voice he wasn’t anticipating and he feels like guilty, pathetic trash all over again. But he won’t beat around the bush with Nat. He never has been able to.

 

“I wasn’t, actually,” is what he finally tells her. He waves his hand towards the chair in front of him but she doesn’t sit. She stands still as a board and glares daggers in his direction until she moves so fast he can’t pay attention and her fist collides with his jaw. It throws him off guard more than it hurts, but it’ll probably bruise later. Paper rustles on the desk as she pushes back, breathing heavily, her eyes red rimmed and angry and he isn’t sure what she’s mad about, but he doesn’t want to fight. He wants to pull her close and hug her, though he isn’t really sure if that’s what she’d want. He might get more than a punch to the jaw.

 

“I thought the world of you,” she says angrily. “I held you to a high regard, no matter what you did or how we disagreed and I always, _always_ defended your actions.” She scoffs and paces in front of him and he rubs his jaw absently. “I can’t defend you anymore. I can’t defend _this_.”

 

“I didn’t ask you to,” he counters, because he hadn’t asked anyone for anything, except Shuri. All he’d asked of her was her heart, for the chance to have her close to him and he thinks, he hopes, he’ll have that. “I don’t even understand why you’d have to defend any of the shit I did because I’m not going to.”

 

She presses her lips tight and shakes her head. “So that’s it? You’re going to just...let this go and keep on with this whole fiasco? Leave Pepper in New York with your son as if they never existed?”

 

Tony blinks, heat building underneath his collar because that’s exactly what it looks like right now.

 

“I haven’t decided on any-”

 

“Cut the shit, Tony. You’re gonna stay here and try and play happy family with your mistress and her kid, just like the asshole everyone always said you were. I thought you weren’t. Maybe I was wrong.”

 

She whirls around to leave but he stops her, his hand heavy on her shoulder and he keeps his voice level so he doesn’t wake his daughter. But he doesn’t try hiding the irritation on his face and he sees her hackles raise.

 

“First of all, you have no idea what the fuck I plan to do. I don’t even know what I’m going to do.”

 

“You could already be back home,” she tries, but he shakes his head and continues.

 

“I’m under 24 hour guard because the government doesn’t want me running off before they can put me on trial.”

 

“What?”

 

“Yeah, it’s a bunch of bullshit-”

 

“Adultery is illegal in some countries,” she snarks and he has to count down from five so as not to lose his mind.

 

“Funny you mention that, because for all the posturing and self righteous dribble you’re giving me, you were a beer away from getting into Barton’s boxers-ah, don’t even try to deny it!-and the only thing, _the only thing_ that stopped you was reversing the snap and getting Laura and the kids back.”

 

Nat opens her mouth to speak but settles for slinging his hand off her shoulder.

 

“It wasn't...it isn’t the same,” she finally says, and Tony sighs.

 

“Depends on who you ask. An emotional affair is just as bad as a physical, or so I’ve learned.” He offers her a tight, terse smile. “I’ve learned a lot in three years. I’ve learned that I’m capable of surviving near starvation and dying in space. I’ve learned that I have the capacity to destroy one of the best things that ever happened to me just because I didn’t give enough of a shit. And I learned what anger looks like when it’s hurling a knife block at my head.”

 

Nat raises a brow. “She threw a knife block at you?” When he nods, she whistles. “That's my girl. Should have hit you, honestly.”

 

“I wish it would have,” he says quietly and Nat’s shoulders deflate. He offers her a seat once more and this time, she takes it. “Not that it would have helped anything.”

 

“Maybe. But she deserves to get a lick in. Or two. Hand me a water.” He digs around in the fridge and tosses her a bottle and she takes her time in sipping it, leaned back in the chair and contemplative. “What are you going to do?” she finally asks him and Tony shrugs because while he thought he knew, he still really isn’t sure.

 

“I’ll go back. At least for Jude, that’s for sure.”

 

“What about Pepper? Do you think she’ll forgive you?”

 

He shrugs again. “She said she wanted me at home. But I don’t know, Nat. I don’t know if I can fix this.” An awful truth goes through his mind and Nat seems to read it because she closes her eyes and sighs.

 

“You don’t even want to. Tony, she doesn’t deserve that.”

 

“She didn’t and doesn’t deserve a lot of the shit I’ve done. But she deserves better than me. I know that much.”

 

“What makes you think Princess Shuri deserves you?”

 

Tony’s smile is brittle, bitter. “I don't deserve her either, is more like it. But look, that’s not why you’re here, is it?”

 

There’s a moment where Tony isn’t sure if Natasha is going to cry or punch him again. She settles for the former and trails her thumb around the lip of the water bottle as tears well up in her eyes.

 

“Go ahead,” he says, laying a hand on her arm. “Get it out. I know what you’re thinking.”

 

She glances up and has the audacity to looked shocked. He wouldn’t blame her if she did say it. Would it hurt? Sure. Was he thinking it himself? Definitely. _Why wasn't it you instead of him?_

 

“I wasn’t thinking that,” she says fiercely, and in spite of how sore his heart is still, he smiles. “I don’t even...stop that shit.” She sniffles and wipes her eyes. “You are a piece of shit and an asshole and I hope Pepper stomps a mud hole in your ass, but you're still my friend. And you didn’t deserve to die. Neither of you did.” Her face crumples and Tony rolls his chair over to pull her close, into his embrace and she starts to cry on his shoulder. “Why? Why couldn’t the both of you be okay? Why'd Stevie have to die?”

 

“I wish I knew,” he whispers, kissing her forehead.

 

She sobs until he’s sure her chest hurts and slowly, she finishes her water. Tony hears the baby monitor crackle to life as Thandi wakes and upon not seeing either her Baba or Mama, begins to wail.

 

“Welp. Gotta go get munchkin before she has a nuclear meltdown.” He moves to stand and waits for Nat to leave, but she remains seated. “I um...you want to meet her?” He waits for a reaction, a question of why Tony is babysitting the former queen’s child when the baby was Steve’s, but he gets the impression that Nat knows differently.

 

“Yeah.”

 

Thandi’s tears quiet the moment she’s picked up and when her diaper check is clear, Tony plucks one of her pacifiers from the nightstand beside her crib. “Hey baby girl. I’ve got someone who wants to say hi.” A soft gurgle, and a snuggle into her father’s chest, and Tony heads back into the lab, where Nat waits, her leg jumping, her fingers tapping against the glass table.

 

“So I’m assuming you know the truth.”

 

“Um, Bruce told me.” She clears her throat awkwardly. “He said he didn’t know until after Wakanda opened.”

 

“Would you believe me if I didn’t know either?” He sits, shifting the baby around until she sits in his lap. “Well, I didn’t know she’d actually...anyway. Natasha Romanov, I’d like you to meet my daughter, Thandiwe. Thandiwe Maria.”

 

Nat’s smile is genuine, at least, and when she reaches out to hold her, the baby goes to her willingly. If anyone had told him one of his best friends would be holding a daughter he’d had with the princess of Wakanda, he’d have told them to go fuck themselves. But he’d also learned to never rule anything out, no matter how off the wall.

 

“You named her after your mom?”

 

“Yeah. She’s actually got a really long formal name. Royalty and all that. I just call her Than Than.”

 

“Or munchkin, apparently.” Nat kisses the baby’s smooth cheeks and coos to her sweetly. “God, she’s beautiful. I still need to meet Jude, you know.”

 

“Yeah. Hell, she still needs to meet Jude. If it’ll happen.”

 

“Tony...I don’t know if…”

 

“Me either.” Tony covers his face with his hand and tries hard not to think of the impossibilities and the what could bes because it would drive him crazy. Instead, he plays peek a boo with his Thandiwe while Natasha tickles her belly, until the door to the lab opens and Okoye strides in, his two Dora guards behind her.

 

“Mr. Stark,” she says, her tone as hard as the floor beneath them. “The council will see you now.”

 

* * *

 

Thandi goes to her nanny and Nat to find Bucky, but not without a glance backward. It’s a long, quiet walk down the corridors to the throne room where the council holds their hearings and meetings. He feels like his guts are on fire and he just wants all of this to be over with.

 

He’s read a long list of charges, most of them nonsensical, but the charges of indecency, coercion, and conspiracy to commit espionage catch his attention and his temper.

 

“I’m not a damned spy,” he says, spreading his hands angrily. He wishes Shuri were here, or at least Nakia, but neither of them will be able to decide on his fate, so they’re out until the ruling. “You might be right about some of that shit, but spying isn’t in my MO.”

 

“So you deny that you seduced the acting queen in order to obtain military and scientific secrets and sell them?” He isn’t sure who that is speaking, one of the elders, someone who’d been giving him the most grief since the entire meeting began. Tony rolls his eyes and paces the floor.

 

“Straight up and down, yeah, I deny it! I didn’t seduce anybody.” He glares at T’Challa, who stares at him neutrally. That makes him even angrier. “All this bullshit about me somehow coaxing state secrets out of Shuri…” He shakes his head and almost laughs, but settles for scoffing in disbelief. “I’ve never had any reason to steal anything from this country. I’ve never had any reason to want to betray Shuri like that. Maybe you don’t believe me but...she means a lot to me. I love her.” 

 

There’s a murmur around the council and T’Challa’s eyes are burning holes into his skin. He drops his gaze and stares at the floor, until the council quiets and the king speaks again.

 

“How do you plead?” 

 

 

He stands first on one foot and then the other. He hopes for some sort of mercy, but he’s convinced that they’re going to sentence him and probably put him in prison or feed him to the crocodiles in the river beneath the waterfall. And he doesn’t want an execution, not with so much to lose, but he prepares for the worse possible outcome. Tony swallows the spit in his mouth and blinks heavily in the bright throne room, his body swaying side to side imperceptibly as he tries and fails to not look as scared as he is. His jaw still throbs from where Nat hat socked him; he’s dimly aware that he’d probably have an broken jaw if it wasn’t for the serum. _Thanks Steve_ , he thinks bitterly. _Still saving me, even from the grave._

 

“Not guilty,” he says firmly, mostly without apology, his anger seeping away and leaving only regret. He _is_ guilty, but only of having an affair. He’s sorry about it, too, at least about who he’s hurt and how.

 

But no matter how this was going to end up (and he knew, long ago, when he’d first lain her in his bed and tasted the sweetness of her mouth how it would end up), he couldn’t be sorry that he’d gotten the chance to touch Shuri, to love her, to worship her, to spend every waking moment of the last two and a half years adoring her. Nor would be be sorry about the product of that love, his baby girl, his Thandiwe. He wouldn’t regret that no matter how terrible the consequences. 

 

The king takes Tony’s plea to the council and a Dora collects their votes. He sits outside the throne room for the hour it takes, counts the lines in the granite floor and considers how long it’ll take him to drown before the crocodiles find him. He wonders if the drop from the falls would kill him on impact, sparing him a bloody brutal death at the jaws of those massive beasts. He decides it doesn’t really matter either way; his son will grow up without his father, the only thing left of him a memory and the legacy of the Stark name. And his daughter will probably never even know that she’s his. She’ll spend her life believing that Steve Rogers is her father and Bucky Barnes will raise her as his own. He’ll have to allow it to happen because he’ll be dead. He hopes that even despite the terrible shit he’s done that he’ll see Maria Stark on the other side, if such a thing existed.

 

God, he hopes.

 

_I’m coming, Mama. A little early, but I’m coming._

 

Council is done and the door to the throne room opens, and after a spear tap on the floor, he walks back inside. Nakia and Shuri have joined, as have Ramonda, and he meets Shuri’s eyes, reaching desperately for the brief flash of a smile she offers. The princess sits beside her brother, head held high and shoulders straight, still a queen in everything but name, her face smooth and placid much like her mother’s, her eyes curious and sharp though the nervous curl of her fingers spoke volumes to him. He keeps his eyes on her and counts every breath.

 

There's a beat of silence and then the sentinel begins pronouncment, and Tony thought he’d been prepared, but he finds his judgement is worse than being eaten alive or drowned beneath a waterfall. He misses the first half of what the sentinel says, his ears perking up at the word _exile_ , and he has to do a double take because that can’t be right, it can’t be-

 

“Brother, no!” Shuri says with a choked gasp. He searches her face for confirmation of what he thought he’d heard and sees panic in her eyes and his chest feels like it’s caving in.

 

“Your Majesty,” he begins, clearing his throat and struggling to keep standing. He can’t breathe. He feels like he’s being swallowed alive. “Please, I…you can’t do that, you can’t-“

 

“The council has made its decision,” T’Challa says sternly, but there’s a flicker of sympathy there too. “You are hereby exiled from Wakanda, not to cross these borders from now until the end of your natural life. The price for disobeying your exile is death, instant and without a jury.”

 

“This isn’t right!” Shuri hisses, tugging at her brother’s sleeve. He turns and gives her a look that makes Tony’s heart shatter and she stills, blinks back tears, and shakes her head. Ramonda reaches out a hand to grab her, but she sinks back to her brother’s side silently, her face so tight he’s afraid it could crack. She doesn’t speak again, but her eyes catch his and the reality of the ruling hits him like a ton of bricks. He’ll never get to see her again. He’ll never get to see _Thandi_ again.

 

_Oh god…_

 

A sob wells up in his chest and he sways, hitting the floor at the realization of what is happening overwhelms him.

 

“No, no, please…” He’ll beg if he has to. He’ll spend however long they want in a prison cell somewhere if only he’ll be able to keep seeing his daughter. But he can’t do this, he can’t leave her and say goodbye knowing he’ll never get to see her grow up in person. “I’m sorry. I’m not…I didn’t-“

 

“You didn’t think,” the mining tribe’s elder says, her face completely devoid of the slightest bit of sympathy and he doesn’t bother holding back his tears now. He lets them fall freely, wraps his arm around his middle and heaves in air painfully. “This is the consequence of your actions, Mr. Stark. You thought to grab hold of the jewel of Wakanda when it was not yours.”

 

He almost misses the way Shuri glares at her, her mouth set in a line too tense to be anything but absolute anger. But what good is her anger when she can’t disobey her brother and the council? And what good were his tears when they wouldn’t move anyone to change their mind?

 

He’s close to a whine when he stumbles up from the floor. He scrubs at his face and focuses on the here and now; he has to breathe. He has to survive. Somehow, he has to keep going. Borders and exiles be damned. No one and nothing can keep him from his daughter, not for eternity.

 

“Can I at least say goodbye?” he asks, when he think he can speak without screaming, and the king nods once.

 

“You have three days.”

 

There’s silence in the throne room and it’s suddenly so very cold and so very still. He can only hear the beating of his heart, how it skips out of time and the tremors in his legs that make him nauseous. He looks first to Shuri, and for a moment he sees heartbreak. And he forgives her no matter what choice she’d made or what part she’d had in this because he knows she hadn’t wanted him exiled, at least. If he clings to that fact, he knows he’ll manage. Somehow.

 

“Thank you,” he says in a voice so soft that it’s almost missed, but the sharp rise of T’Challa’s brow says he’d been heard. The king leans forward and regards him with cautious curiosity.

 

“Whatever for?”

 

Tony manages to eke out a soft, bitter laugh, a smile, a twisted and pained thing that makes everyone in the room grimace.

 

“For your mercy, your majesty. It’s much more than I deserve.”

 

* * *

 

He feels like he’s suffocating in his room, so he goes to the garden, though the beauty of the place eludes him. It feels more like a tomb now, than a paradise. The scent of the African violets is cloying and overwhelming in the weak, mid-afternoon breeze and the sun shimmers above his head mockingly, beautiful and brilliant but cruel, too.

 

He hasn’t felt any of its warmth in the hours since the ruling and there’s a chill that settles in his bones that he’s sure will be there for the rest of his life.

 

Tony rubs his hands absently, breathing shallowly around the stone that pushes heavily onto his heart. He’s been forced into one choice without hope of another, and though his wife had made talked about reconciliation, he has a feeling none of it will come to fruition. He’ll be shut out of his son’s life, stripped of his pride and cast out like yesterday’s garbage.

 

He’d feel bad for himself, but honestly, he’s a little relieved at the outcome. It meant the hiding was over. The worst was done and there was nowhere to go now but forward. And then, his mind drifted back to his daughter, the girl he’d thought he’d never have, and he feels that panicky, twisting feeling in his gut again when he thinks of never being allowed to hold her again, to watch her grow, to see her first steps. She was only four months and a few days; would she even remember her father after he’d left? Would Shuri even bother to tell her about him?

 

He could hope, but hope hadn’t gotten him too far lately. The twist in his gut turned into a spike of spite and anger and he straightened up on the bench and let it fester. Spite worked far more wonders than hope ever had. Leaving Shuri would hurt, there was no doubt about that, but no one in the world could keep him from his children, Thandi included.

 

Footsteps sounded through the cobblestones of the garden and he closed his eyes against the sunshine, letting out one slow breath after the other. He could pick those footsteps out in his sleep, and he clenched his hands against the smooth marble of the bench to prepare for the inevitable heartbreak. He could almost see her now, cool and implacable as if nothing had happened, as if they hadn’t spent the last few years completely entangled in an affair that had lit his life on fire and burned it to the ground.

 

But when he opens his eyes, he sees the face of a scared, hurt girl, and his shell shatters into a million pieces when she stands in front of him, her hands wringing and her lip wobbling.

 

“I told him not to do it,” she says in a rush, breathless, as if she’d been sobbing only moments earlier. He suspects she probably had been. “I made him promise me that no harm would come to you, no matter those stupid charges-”

 

“Espionage?”

 

“I don’t know. I don’t fucking know, Tony! They threw whatever they could at you to get you away from me and I-”

 

She breaks off and bites her lip and tugs at the hem of her shirt, drawing deep breaths in and then out. Her brow furrows as she talks. “They wouldn't even let me plead for you. But I don't guess it would have helped any. And really...I suppose it helps makes your decision for you, then, doesn't it?”

 

His heart drops and he shakes his head.

 

“This doesn’t mean we can't try,” he counters, moving to get off the bench but she holds her hand out as if she’s scared of him touching her now. “Shuri...we can figure something out. You and me. Remember? We can...I don’t know, we can do something but-”

 

He knows he sounds betrayed but he can’t help it. No matter what he’d claimed, no matter how he’d lied and said he didn’t know what he was going to do, his heart had always been set on her. And now he didn’t even have that option anymore. He wants to be angry that she was giving up but he realizes how difficult this would be on her. There wasn’t a way out of this, not one that didn’t involve her giving up everything most important to her. He wouldn’t ruin her anymore than he already had, not even for the benefit of himself. He loved her too much to drag her down any further.

 

But he couldn’t stop from wanting, and the wanting was killing him.

 

“I know what you said. I know what you wanted. But I realize now that maybe I was being selfish in thinking I could have my cake and eat it too. What kind of life could we have, Tony?” She scoffs painfully and it tears another hole in his already frayed heart. “None of this was ever supposed to happen.”

 

“It did happen.” He knows she’s right. He knows he should take his second chance and run with it, but that second chance feels more like a prison sentence than an absolution.

 

“Right, and we’ll be paying for that for however long. No use in making everything worse by defying the odds.”

 

He lets out a hard exhale and grimaces as the ache in his heart nearly overwhelms him. Visions of a life with her beside him—with her and with Thandi and with Jude—flash before his eyes and he has to blink hard to keep them from clawing away at his sanity. He blinks back tears, too, before she can see them, but it’s too late. Her voice softens, though it does nothing to cushion the blow.

 

“You have your wife to think of. You have a second chance at what you destroyed with our bullshit—”

 

“What bullshit?” he prods her, his eyes angry and his mouth ready to bite. “Nothing that happened between us was right, but none of that was bullshit.” He wipes at his eyes hurriedly and presses closer and he feels her nails dig into his knuckles. The tears are too heavy and he’s so tired and he hurts. “That baby isn’t bullshit.”

 

“No. Not Thandi.” She reaches for his face and he leans his cheek into the heat of her palm, soaking up every last bit of intimacy before it’s all wrenched away from him. “Not our baby girl.”

 

She’s quiet then for a long while, until she moves ever so slowly and nudges her way into his lap. He feels every nerve on end, throbbing and burning pain and soul wrenching ache and he curls his shaking arms around her slender frame protectively, the first little waves of his sobs bubbling forth like a spout. She brushes his tears away and kisses him softly on the forehead, then his cheeks, and finally, brushes her mouth to his own, until she’s crying too and her tears mingle with his and her kisses swallow the sound.

 

“I’m going to let you go,” she says, brokenly. “I have to, Tony Stark. Bast knows I don’t want to, but I have to and…”

 

“Promise me something?”

 

She blinks and regards him for a long moment before she finally nods.

 

“What is it?”

 

“Please don’t ever forget me.” He holds her tighter and presses his forehead to hers until the pain and her eyes are the only things he can make sense of. “Don’t let my baby forget me, either. _Please_. That’s all I ask of you.”

 

She lets out the softest shudder of a sob and nods, face crumpling. He thinks he can feel her heart breaking and he knows now he could never be angry at her for how this all worked out. Never.

 

“I promise. I swear it.”

 

He kisses her one last time, and pushes her forward gently until she slides off his lap and foot first onto the cobblestones. Her face shifts, and her shoulders straighten, and when she speaks again, she’s no long his Shuri, but the Princess of Wakanda and the change jars him just enough that he winces.

 

“You’ve got one more syringe of the serum, if you want it,” she says, and he nods and lets her pull him from the bench, her touch just as warm as it was before but so far away.

 

“Don’t wanna get too attached to that stuff. I can’t take any out the country.”

 

She raises a brow and the barest flash of rebellion sparkles in her eyes and he almost smiles though it’s too much to ask of himself.

 

“I wouldn’t be so sure about that, Tony Stark,” she says, waiting for him to get up from the bench and start down the trail.

 

She never leaves him, not as he moves like a ghost along the pathways and back to the palace. She stands beside him and for a few hours more, he feels steady.

 

* * *

 

He leaves four days later at eight o’clock in the morning after a night of sleepless contemplation of what he would do next. He’d decided sometime around four a.m. that he wouldn’t worry about what happened after. He would let everything fall where it would and whatever happened, happened. It was a terrifying way to start over, but it was all he had.

 

Pepper had video chatted soon after he woke. He couldn’t read her face—he hasn’t been able to read anything about her since he’d text her with the ruling—and he’s tired of trying to figure anything else out. Maybe he doesn’t deserve to know what she’s thinking anymore. He doesn’t push anything. He meets her eyes, cool and calm and sharp in their blueness and gives her his itinerary and hangs up with a resolute tap.

 

The quinjet seems so looming on the tarmac. T’Challa stands beside it with a stony face and perfect posture. The line of Dora that precede the King are quiet, too, as is the morning around him. There is still an odd eerie feeling in the air, as if the world is still trying to regain its balance after being shifted on its axis for three years. Shuri is noticeably absent, as is Thandi, but he’d expected that. Tony avoids looking at Okoye and keeps the incline of his head brief toward Ramonda, only lingering on Nakia’s sympathetic eyes for longer than a moment. He can barely stand to look at T’Challa; though he’s less angry than he’d been the day of his judgement, he’s still simmering with grief and loss. But when he’s stopped by an outstretched hand, he waits, obedient and still, and keeps his tongue.

 

“You must realize that I had no choice in the matter,” T’Challa says quietly, so that only those in the immediate circle of himself and Nakia can hear. Ramonda probably, too, can hear, but she doesn’t give any inclination that she does, and Okoye turns her head.

 

“Of course.” He keeps his words short and clipped because there’s nothing left to talk about. He feels empty and burnt out and he just wants to get this day and the next and the next over with. Maybe with time it’ll be easier. Maybe if he stopped breathing, it wouldn’t hurt so badly.

 

“I only want to assure you that this should not have any adverse effects on our…” The king seems to struggle with a word to use that would describe the tenuous thread that linked them together. Tony waves the attempt away.

 

“It shouldn’t,” he says dryly. “I’m retired now.”

 

T’Challa raises his brow in mild surprise and then nods, moving aside to allow Tony to board the plane.

 

“I meant to say,” T’Challa calls after him, “about my niece.”

 

He pauses on the lift and shifts his head just enough to know that he’d heard him.

 

“If my sister wishes to involve you in Thandiwe’s life in some remote way, I will not disallow it.”

 

“I appreciate that.” Holos and phone calls, FaceTime and Skype, presents and letters. Someday, he’d figure out a way to see his Thandi in the flesh again, but that would have to do in the meantime.

 

“Farewell, Mr. Stark,” T’Challa says quietly and Tony nods, starts back up the lift and into the empty quinjet.

 

He drops his bags near the door and sits for a moment, long enough to keep from falling to pieces. He doesn’t understand why he keeps glancing towards the palace. It’s like pressing on a bruise and savoring the pain. His eyes wander up the spires and towers to the balcony that was Shuri’s, to the room where they’d made love and made their daughter and made a mess of their lives. He memorizes the glint of the sun on the beautiful palace and breathes in deep and clenches the leather seat beneath him because this is the last time.

 

Just as he gets the strength to move and head toward the cockpit, there’s a flurry outside. Or, it’s less a flurry and more a flutter, but it catches his attention nonetheless. He leans over and glances out the window of the jet and dark brown eyes he loves more than he has any right to search for him, find him, and hold steady. He’s out the quinjet before he can think about it, back down the lift, onto the tarmac where the king and the queen mother watch with pity and irritation, but Nakia with sympathy and hurt. Okoye doesn’t watch at all. Okoye keeps her head turned as if she’s ashamed, and maybe she is.

 

But none of that, none of _them_ , matter at that moment because Shuri wraps him in her arms, Thandi on her hip and her lip wobbling and she presses her cheek to his and whispers his name so brokenly that he almost collapses.

 

“I’m sorry,” she breathes out, tickling the skin of his neck. “I’m sorry, Tony, I wish-”

 

He shakes his head and holds her tight, presses his lips to her temple and then to Thandi’s too, and she coos sweetly. “I wish, too, pretty baby. I wish, too.” He pulls back and offers her a smile, broken and ragged, and she blinks her tears back to keep from completely embarrassing herself. He lets his eyes drift from one plane of her face to the other, from eat to ear and top to chin, so that he’ll always have her in his head and his memory. She’ll be in his heart forever, no matter what he does or how he lives out his life. She will always be his baby, his pretty baby.

 

She seems to want to say something else, but she sighs instead and with a quick push of her toes up, she kisses him, gentle and desperate and angry and sad. She’s completely uncaring of who watches, and honestly, so is he. It’s slow and aching, a direct contrast to their first but just as shattering and she whimpers against his mouth when she finally pulls away. He reaches out for his baby girl and holds her too, snuggles his face into her hair and breathes in deep. He thought it couldn’t hurt much more, but he was wrong. It was almost unbearable.

 

One more kiss, one more press of his lips to hers and a torn goodbye and he turns to leave before it literally kills him to. She stands on the tarmac holding their daughter and watches him start the plane. Her eyes never leave his, not until he’s higher and higher and she’s a small speck on a dark expanse, and the sky meets the windshield.

 

Tony puts the quinjet on autopilot and leans back in his seat, wraps the string of waist beads around his wrist tight, and falls to pieces.

 

* * *

 

 

>   
>    
>    
>  END OF PART ONE: RIPTIDE

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you to everyone who has stuck around and waited patiently for this update. it's been hell trying to get it together, and while i'm not quite satisfied with what i have, i decided that it was best to post it and move forward.
> 
> from here on out is part two; there will be an interlude chapter and then we'll jump into "hightide", the remainder of the story from shuri's pov! i'm excited to get to this part, and have lots of it already written so i think updates will come much swifter than they have previously.
> 
> thanks so much for reading, ya'll! see you soon.


	7. be all my sins remembered

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> part II: hightide
> 
> Tony and Shuri live with the consequences of their actions and try to carve out some sort of happiness even in spite of the hell that they’ve made. Somehow, they manage to make do with the cards they’ve been dealt

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Welcome to part two! From here on, we get Shuri's POV of the story. I'm really excited about this half and hope you guys will enjoy the outcome. There is a separate one shot coming out soon that will detail some of the missing pieces that happen between this chapter and the last, so look out for that.

_April, 2023_

.

.

.

.

For once, she’d like to wake up naturally; no crying toddler, no too bright sun, no screeching alarm. But the world doesn’t wait, especially not for princesses, and especially not for one as busy as she. So she stretches out on her bed and groans, untangles her limbs from the sheets, and peels her eyes open slowly.

 

“Mama!” she hears from across her room, and little feet pitter patter over to the bed. “Mama, wake up! I’m hungry!”

 

Shuri lets out a slow breath and turns her head, trying to keep the exhaustion out of her expression for her daughter. As tired as she was, with only four hours of sleep, she didn’t want Thandi to see her so disgruntled first thing in the morning. A mess of curly dark hair and bright hazel eyes greet her and she almost smiles as the little girl crawls up into her mother’s great big bed and plops down across her chest. Shuri lets out a soft _oof_ and shifts Thandi until the weight of her is a little more comfortable. She wasn’t a very heavy child at all but the weight of her on Shuri’s ribs was almost painful.

 

“You’re going to crack my ribs doing that, Bibi,” she says, sleep still strong in her voice, and Thandi giggles.

 

“Nuh uh!” she declares, pushing up and flopping back down again. Shuri hisses and shoots the little girl a glare, but she seems mostly immune, her grin never wavering as she kicks her legs back and forth behind her. “Can I have cookies?”

 

“No.”

 

“I‘m hungry, Mama!”

 

“Oh, I know you are, sweet girl,” Shuri says with a sigh. “You’re always hungry. But Mama is tired and wants to lay down for a few minutes more. Can I have a few more minutes?”

 

Thandi seems to consider this and then bobs her head in agreement, and much to Shuri’s surprise and relief, lays her head on her mother’s chest and rests. Her feet still kick and she wiggles like a worm the entire time, but for a solid five minutes, Shuri can put the day on hold.

 

But the quiet is broken by a knock on her door and she groans, pushing up from the bed while Thandi hangs on her like a baby sloth.

 

“Hold tight, Bibi,” Shuri says, because telling her to get down would be of no use. She wouldn’t. It was a miracle she listened to Shuri at all most days, especially in the morning, and especially when she was hungry. “That’s probably your uncle coming to take us out for breakfast.”

 

“Uncle! I wanna eat cookies!”

 

Shuri snorts, and shifts the girl in her arms until she’s much more secure. “No cookies. They’ll ruin your teeth.”

 

At the mention of teeth, Thandi grins harder and shows off her small collection, and Shuri coos about how nice they are. Thandi was uncommonly proud of her teeth, and bared them every opportunity she got. Mama had said it was something she’d done as a child too, but Shuri didn’t remember that far back. If she’d been a hyperactive teeth obsessed two and a half year old, she didn’t recall.

 

She opens the door, and her brother greets her looking every inch the king, in a dark, soft suit of wool and gold thread. Thandi is instantly polite and accepts the kiss to her forehead sweetly, while Shuri takes her hug with an almost wary sort of posture. It wasn’t that she didn’t appreciate the gesture; it was simply that there was distance between her and T’Challa that she didn’t know how to cover, and things were still awkward.

 

But for the most of breakfast, the awkwardness is pushed aside so that T’Challa can make small talk and throw around ideas for upgrading his suit. Shuri takes notes and almost loosens up as the conversation progresses. They debate the pros and cons of putting repulsors or blasters onto the newest upgrade, and T’Challa seems firmly against it.

 

“My power comes from my training, from the heart shaped herb, and the strength it gives me. I don’t need much else, truly.”

 

Shuri shrugs and cuts up egg for Thandi, deciding to drop the subject. “It’s your suit,” she says, but figures she can sneak some blasters on just in case. “You get to call the shots on what goes into it. I’m just here to make it better.”

 

“And that, you do.” He smiles and finishes his bowl of grits, but when he raises his eyes to her once more, his seriousness makes her stomach turn. “You must come to council today, Shuri.”

 

“I don’t think anyone missed me for skipping last time,” she says, practically pouting. But nothing good ever came of council meetings, at least not in the time she’d been going since the Fix. There was nothing but accusations and rude, dismissive comments from elders who all thought her a failure.

 

“It wasn’t taken well,” he counters, and his voice is stern, though still soft. “You can not hide from your responsibilities, as you are of age, and a member of the royal family, it your job to sit in council, to listen to the concerns of our members-”

 

“And listen to them drag me through the mud over and over without being allowed to defend my actions,” she cuts in hotly. She was so sick of them picking on her; it was as if they got together once a week just to insult and harrass her.

 

T’Challa presses his mouth into a line and narrows his eyes, and for a second, she regrets her outburst. But he says nothing for a while and she lets out a breath and finishes her breakfast in slience, making sure that Thandi gets most of her egg in her mouth instead of on her clothes.

 

“You can not keep running from your mistakes,” he says, his voice barely loud enough for to her hear. She clutches her chair beneath the table and glares in his direction.

 

“I have been confronted, and confronted, and _confronted_ about my so called mistakes for _three_ years-””

 

“And yet there are more that I’m still trying to fix!”

 

And there it was. Shuri breathes in deep and works her jaw in anger, because none of this was fair. _I did what I had to do to keep this country together!_ Hang the council and hang the Jabari who had betrayed her, and hang her brother for trying so hard to appease everyone else at the expense of her feelings.

 

“This has nothing to do with what you supposedly have to fix, does it?” she asks, because she knows better. He plays obtuse, the way she expects him to, the way he’s done since he’d been brought back to life.

 

“It has everything to do with what you failed to do as Queen, sister. You ruined the brothership we fostered with the Jabari, you exiled M’Baku back into the mountains, you let your ego and your own selfish desires overrule any good sense you should have used to keep the coup from ever happening to begin with and-”

 

“You weren’t here!” she almost screams, startling her daughter who blinks at her mother and uncle confused. She shakes her head and prays hard to Bast to keep her calm, to not start a wild argument, especially not this early in the day. “You weren’t here. I did what I could. Don’t pretend you would have been able to even fix what happened without me here, much less try and keep your crown at the same time.” She reaches for her glass of water with shaking hands and takes a swing, lowering her eyes because looking at him makes her too angry.

 

“This is about Thandi," she spits, putting it out in the open. "This is about her father and about what they thought was me betraying my own kind.” She laughs bitterly. "This is about keeping me in check for getting out of line. It _always_ has been. And you’ve been happily playing along with them.”

 

T’Challa opens his mouth and looks almost abashed. “Shuri...sister, no, that isn’t-”

 

But she doesn’t stay to listen. She picks Thandi up, though she protests, and walks from the dining room to the garage, her mind in a whirlwind and her heart heavy. She refuses to shed a tear, though they threaten to spill, and drives to the one place left that could be her sanctuary. 

 

* * *

 

The lab is quiet, though there’s at least ten assistants working hard on research and development. And though they lift their heads and greet her respectfully, they seem almost reluctant to have anything to do with her, except for her head assistant, Kikade. She was as chipper as ever, and ushered Shuri into the lab with updates on the work they’d been doing so far, taking her mind off the tiring breakfast with her brother.

 

“Thank you, Kikade. Do you have anything else for me?”

 

Kikade stops making faces at Thandi and straightens, smiling as she shakes her head.

 

“I do believe that’s all. If you need me, your Highness, I’ll be on level three. I’ve got some results to study.”

 

Shuri finds a smile somewhere inside her and pulls Thandi alongside her, hoping a pad and a movie, or even a set of child sized lab toys would keep her distracted. Unfortunately, Thandi had her eyes set on the nodes in Shuri’s work table drawer, and kept pulling them out, spinning them around and giggling as she tossed them off the table.

 

“Bibi, stop,” she murmurs, no heat or force behind the admonition at all. She’s tired, especially after the failure of a breakfast. She’s exhausted and she doesn’t like to yell because then Thandi starts to cry-a wailing, full body tantrum-and she doesn’t have the energy to deal with that. She thinks perhaps it’s better to let her break whatever she’s meddling with and then fix it later; money isn’t an issue and this is her lab, after all.

 

“Mama!”

 

“Yes Bibi.”

 

“I’m gonna smash it!”

 

There’s a crash and Shuri winces, groans a bit as she hauls herself up from her computer desk and over to the makeshift play area she’d designated for Thandi. She isn’t sure how the child even gets a hold of things to smash in this little section, only that beakers and holo pads come up missing then end up cracked or shattered after. There’s a look of absolute mischief on the girl’s face, as yet another one of Shuri’s good pad screens lay in a pile of thin glass on the floor.

 

“I really don’t understand why this is so funny,” she grumbles, as Thandi tugs at the braids swinging across her mother’s shoulders and laughs. She lifts her little arms and Shuri picks her up with a grunt, dusting fine glass from the toddler’s clenched fists and checking her over for any small cuts. Nothing, thank goodness, but she’d have to sweep up the mess and find something to occupy Thandi while she did it. There were always the assistants, but this was her job, not theirs. There were enough whispers and looks her way as it was; she didn’t want anyone accusing her of being a tyrant.

 

_You did whatever you wanted whenever you wanted with no regard for anyone else. That is a tyrant!_

 

“Mama, pick me up!”

 

“No.”

 

There’s not enough strength in her arms to toss her heavy child into the air, and she doesn’t have the heart for it anyway.

 

“Mama, I wanna go up!”

 

“Thandi, Mama has work to do. I can’t play right now, I-“

 

“I WANNA GO UP!”

 

And then there is a smack across her face and a giggle and Shuri nearly drops the child right then and there, almost leaves her in the middle of the lab and screams because she’s so tired. She can’t do this. Not for the first time does she wish the nanny wasn’t on leave. Dakuri was due to have her own baby in a few weeks, and the pregnancy had a few complications so she was on rest until after the birth. She could have left Thandi with Umama or even Nakia, but didn’t want to impose. Even T’Challa would do if she didn’t know he was too busy to be bothered with a toddler, and probably too angry at her outburst at breakfast. There wasn’t anyone else she really trusted her baby with besides…

 

He was on the other side of the world trying to sort out his own issues with his soon to be ex-wife. He didn’t have time for her, not right now.

 

But the tears that sprang to her eyes burn more than her cheek does and she heaves in a hard breath, willing them back though they spill anyway. Thandi is quiet for the first time all day, her little hand reaching up to smooth over the sharp edge of Shuri’s jaw.

 

“Mama? ‘m sorry.”

 

There’s an almost base level of revulsion she feels, the idea that someone could hurt her and then move to soothe it right after, and before she can make her brain make sense of the situation, she smacks the girl’s hand away and growls, plopping Thandi on the desk and stalking off toward the bathroom. The girl screams and Shuri slams the door shut.

 

She lets herself sob like she hasn’t in ages. It comes out in sharp, jagged pieces, and she almost worries she won’t catch her breath as she slides down on the floor, fluorescent light hovering behind her tightly closed eyes. This is what she’d signed up for. This is her problem, her job. She can’t expect anyone else to fix what she’s broken or pick up her pieces, and she can’t expect anyone else to discipline her daughter.

 

But she can’t expect a spoiled, coddled two year old to know that no means no when she hasn’t really been told.

 

Breathing comes easier, the push and pull of cool filtered air almost cleansing. Minutes pass before she gets off the floor and straightens her clothes, glancing in the mirror at red rimmed, swollen eyes, at the splotchy streak of tears across her cheeks. There wasn’t even a mark on her face from where Thandi had hit her; why had she overreacted so much? Because she knew that if she didn’t nip this right now, it would get worse.

 

Finding some sort of strength from where she didn’t know, she exits the bathroom and finds her daughter still on the desk, her own little caramel face red with tears that have settled into a sort of hicuppy, breathless shudder. Shuri’s heart clenches and it’s her first reaction to reach out and gather her into her arms but she resists, only bending down to wipe the tears away and make sure Thandi hadn’t broken anything else.

 

She glances at the clock, mentally tallying the hours between Birnin Zana and New York. There’s a moment’s hesitation when she taps her kimoyo beads and scrolls through for Tony’s number, cognizant that he’s probably still asleep and that she’d be waking him up for something as silly as this.

 

 _It’s his daughter, too, though,_ she thinks with a steeled heart, and she presses call, holding her breath and Thandi’s little hand as the phone rings.

 

There’s a bit of a delay from the time difference. Shuri makes a harried mental note to improve the call qualities of their international service; it hadn’t been necessary when she’d invented the kimoyo system, not really. And maybe it’s not really needed that much now. Wakanda was as wary of the outside world as they had been before the Snap. It would take some time to get everyone back to the excitement and anticipation they’d felt before the war came.

 

But whatever. It’s mostly a distraction, a quick little puzzle to work on and figure out while butterflies tumble about in her belly and Thandi sniffles pitifully on the desk beside her. There’s a trail of snot down her nose and she takes a second to wipe that away too, not even grimacing at the stain it makes on her lab coat. Maybe she’s getting better at this whole motherhood thing after all, spoiled daughter notwithstanding.

 

And just as she has the child cleaned and somewhat settled, there’s a pair of hazel eyes waiting, bleary and a little groggy since it’s only 6 AM where he is. She darts her eyes around to his background, almost heaving in a sigh of relief that he’s in his lab (on the couch, probably) and not in the nursery with his son. There’s a strange masochistic part of her that wants to meet the little boy, though, maybe even introduce him to Thandi. Jude, she remembers. His name was Jude.

 

“Shuri, hey…what’s up? Is Thandi okay?”

 

Tony’s eyes search around in her background now and so she slides the toddler off the desk, though there’s a whimper of protest and then a howl of absolute objection when Shuri pries a sensitive node out of the child’s hand.

 

“She’s fine. Mostly.”

 

Tony blinks and shifts on the couch, groaning a little at the obvious crick in his neck, but Shuri can see the anticipation on his face as dark curls come into view, and then the absolute delight when the little round face lifts to glance at the shiny screen her mother has up. There’s a heartbeat where no one speaks, not even Thandi, and then a squeal of happiness as she recognizes her father.

 

“Baba!” she squeaks, laughing as she does and reaching forward toward Tony’s image. Shuri can’t help how her heart stutters in her chest when he smiles, the crinkles in his eyes deep and the love in them so overflowing that it’s painful.

 

She wishes he’d looked at her like that. He had, once upon a time, before she’d rejected him to try and right her wrongs. Regrets were all she seemed to be living in and they were nearly drowning her. She pushes that aside and smooths her face into something pleasant, though a bit longsuffering to get her point across.

 

“Hi my sweet girl! Hi Than Than!”

 

More giggles and it’s almost as if Thandi had forgotten all about the crying earlier, her face bright and happy and so sweet that Shuri doesn’t feel nearly as tired anymore. Maybe she should do this more often, time willing. Maybe once a week isn’t enough.

 

“I hate to call you so early, Tony, but she’s-“

 

“Oh, no no no, don’t apologize, Shuri, it’s fine. I always love to see my sugar dumpling. I love you, sweet girl,” he coos, his grin absolutely infectious, and for the first time all day, Shuri lets herself smile.

 

“Love you, Baba!” Thandi gushes, switching effortlessly from Xhosa to English.

 

“Do you want to talk to her for a while?” Shuri asks, hoping he’ll say yes. “I’ve got some tests I need to run.”

 

“Don’t mind at all. Patch me through the holo and I’ll sit with her a while.”

 

“I appreciate it,” she says softly, and his smile is gentle, almost too much for her to handle. She doesn’t want to get ideas about that gentle smile of his because she’ll break her heart again.

 

Shuri fixes up the holo so Tony pops into the lab and Thandi sits in rapture, listening to her Baba tell her a story, and then another, and another. By the time Shuri’s got all her tests done, her lab cleaned, and her work finished for the day, Thandi is curled up in the lab chair with heavy eyes and a calm demeanor, and that was so much more than Shuri would have been able to pull off on her own. Part of her feels a little put out about it, but the other part, the exhausted part, was grateful she could call Tony like this and he’d help her without any argument. In fact, he’d pushed for seeing her more often, and Shuri had been more than happy to relent.

 

That made her wonder, though, about his situation back home. He seemed to have a significant bit more freedom to talk than before; he’d mentioned something about retiring a few weeks back, but she didn’t really think he’d go through with it. His work in the lab for Stark Industries had been his saving grace after leaving Wakanda, and leaving Thandi. She’d wouldn’t say “leaving her” because she didn’t think she had that privilege anymore. He’d moved on, it seemed, and it was probably for the best that she did, too.

 

“Munchkin’s all snoozy now, Shuri,” Tony says, his voice quiet and soothing, and she smiles and presses a hand to her daughter’s cheek. Thandi sighs and snuggles into her mother’s neck as Shuri picks her up to take her home.

 

“You’ve got to tell me your secret on getting her to sleep,” she says, trying for some sort of conversation, because talking to him was a lot better than going back to the palace and dealing with council meetings and her brother again. “I haven’t figured it out in all the time she’s been here. Remember when she was a baby and she fought her naps? I’d rock and rock and rock her and nothing would work.”

 

Tony grins, though there seems to be a little sadness in the lines of his mouth at the memories. “I was always the only person that could get her to just close her eyes and drift off. Sometimes Bruce could too, but only if she was super sleepy.”

 

Steve Rogers could get Thandi to rest, too, but Shuri doesn’t mention anything about that. Steve was still a very sore spot for everyone, and mentioning his name only made her sad and anxious.

 

“Jane and I were convinced she just had too much to see.” Thandi shifts in her arms and then settles back down again with a soft sigh. It tickles her neck and though she’s tired and still on edge, she cherishes the little breath on her skin and kisses her baby’s temple. “She’s always into something, always on the go.”

 

“Mom said I was always into something as a kid. She probably gets it from me.” Tony moves as if to reach out and touch and Shuri hates that he can’t physically hold her. It’s been a long time since he’s been able to pick his Than Than up and dance with her around the room, far too long.

 

 _And a lot of that is my fault_ , she thinks, but she doesn’t want to spoil the mostly neutral, easy going conversation with regrets. So she shifts gears and asks about his son, the way she always does, because it’s the polite thing to do and because she really is curious. He was such a pretty little boy, and super quiet from what Tony had told of him.

 

“Kid’s gonna be smarter than me, mark my words,” he gushes, and Shuri decides to take a seat to listen. “He’s got an almost uncanny knack for language and words...his nanny speaks three languages and he’s picked up on all of those, plus a few others. We got him one of those kiddie language tapes and he just...god, he soaks up everything like a sponge.”

 

“I know you’re proud of him, Tony.”

 

“Yeah.” His smile falters then, and she frowns and leans forward. “I mean, he’s got all the better parts of me, just like his sister did.”

 

“I think our kids always get the better part of us.” She wrestles with the inclination to ask him what’s going on because she doesn’t want to pry. But he looks almost lost now and she can’t stand to see his face like that, so she sucks in a breath and pushes forward. “Are you okay, Tony?”

 

He glances up to her once more and blinks as if he’d been lost in his own mind. “Yeah. I’m fine. I just…” He waves his hands around and tries for a casual laugh, but it comes out rather bitter. “No. No, I’m not okay. I’m…”

 

“Hey. What’s wrong? You can tell me.” She remembers after the breakup with Bucky and the fallout with the paternity leak and how Tony had kept her from falling apart, even halfway across the planet. There’d been many a night he’d allowed her to text him no matter how late, and she’d always be grateful for that. If she could repay the favor, she would.

 

“Divorce was finalized yesterday.”

 

“Oh...I'm sorry, I-”

 

“Yeah, and uh...Pep’s still giving me hell about custody.”

 

Shuri blinks, opens her mouth to say something, and comes up short with anything except a bitter expletive she didn’t really have any right to utter. She had no right to feel any sort of way about Pepper Potts-Stark except sorry for ruining her marriage. And there was definitely a part of her that was sorry...but a significant part that still wasn’t. But that's neither here nor there. Regardless of how that relationship had worked out--and apparently, it hadn't--Tony was a phenomenal father and didn’t deserve to be shut out of his son’s life. It was bad enough he couldn’t see Thandi the way he should have.

 

“Why? I thought the two of you were doing okay?” From everything he’d said, whenever he happened to mention his soon to be ex-wife, they were being cordial and sorting through their separation maturely and without drama, and Shuri had been fighting between being relieved that they had decided to divorce and oddly bereft. She kept all of that to herself, though.

 

“Yeah, for a while there we did fine. I mean, it wasn't taken well at first, but...”

 

“The American rags were right, then.”

 

She remembers seeing the headlines splashed across the internet when the news first broke of their separation. There'd been an odd smothering feeling in her chest seeing the so called details of an impending divorce in bright, pink letters, and when he'd confirmed them, that feeling had only intensified.

 

“More than they actually know.”

 

“I’m sorry, Tony. I really am.” She was sorry, only because he’d wanted to try and make things work for Jude’s sake. But she knew holding on when something couldn’t be fixed never worked; she’d learned that trying to be Bucky Barnes’ “sweet baby” when she was someone else.

 

Bast, she’d wanted that to work so badly, but for the life of her, she wasn’t quite sure why anymore.

 

“It is what it is,” he says, though she knows the gravity of the situation is wearing on him. “I made my bed, I’ve gotta sleep in it. Maybe this is what I get...supervised visitation with my own son when it's convenient for her.” He scoffs angrily.

 

“Does she really have to drag your son through this?” Shuri asks, because none of that seemed fair to her at all. Granted, neither of them had much room to talk about anything being fair after what they’d done, but the boy was an innocent. Why punish him by trying to punish his father?

 

 _I would never do something like that_ , she thinks fiercely. _No matter what._

 

“She says she’s the primary caregiver and the most stable parent.” He shrugs again, this time angrily. “That’s debatable, considering how much time he spends with me, but we’ll see. I’m fighting her on this, out of court hopefully, because it's better that way. God, I never thought I’d have to fight Pepper for anything.” He shakes his head and she sees all the regrets and all his pain written all over his face. She wonders if that’s the way she looked when Bucky found out about Thandi’s real father.

 

“Anyway,” he continues, diverting her train of thought, “I’m thinking of moving upstate. I was gonna go for something in the general area...close enough to the compound that I could see Jude everyday, but with this retirement coming up-”

 

“So you _are_ retiring, then?”

 

“At least with the company,” he says with a careful smile. “To be fair, Pep has done almost all the work over the last ten years. But...it was nice to get back in the lab. I want to try something else, though.”

 

Shuri crosses her legs and adjusts Thandi’s head on her shoulder. The toddler napped so peacefully, and Shuri could only imagine it was because Tony’s voice still reverberated through her office.

 

“Like what?”

 

Tony’s grin is almost genuine, like the kind he gives his daughter, like the kind she used to see him give her. “Farming.” When she makes a face, he laughs. “No, no, hear me out! I’ve been looking and there’s some land for sale a few hours from the city. Got a nice big house attached and a barn, and I was thinking of starting out small at first. I mean, I’m no one’s country boy.”

 

She finds herself giggling at the image of Tony in overalls and a large straw hat.

 

“Don’t want to get in too deep if you don’t know what you’re doing,” she says, nodding. “You’ll have to really do your research.”

 

“Oh trust me, I am. I’m wondering if I want to do nothing but veg for the first few years or actually try my hand at raising animals.” His smile softens. “Dairy cows, probably. Cows are apparently lucrative business. And definitely some chickens. Goats? Do you think I could handle goats?”

 

Shuri feels her heart warm at his excitement in spite of the heaviness that weighed on him. “You _are_ a goat, Tony Stark,” she says, teasing, and his eyes twinkle with his laughter.

 

They talk for minutes more, and though she doesn’t want to let him go, she does. He’s got work to do and he’s already been on holo for over three hours. He tells her to give Thandi one last kiss for him and she does, right in front of him, as the child still sleeps and barely stirs. Using all her strength, she pushes back her chair and cradles her daughter with one arm while collecting her bag with the other, and makes her way up the obsidian stairs of the lab.

 

The assistants, as usual, were polite and quiet and respectful, but none except Kikade gave her a smile as she bid them all good afternoon. It would have bothered her much in the way it had that morning if she hadn’t spent three hours with Tony on the line. But as she buckled Thandi into her car seat, getting sleepy protests from being disturbed, the sadness began to creep back in. No matter how much she tries to keep those feelings buried, they always return, threatening to drown her and swallow her whole.

 

It was only by the kindness of her sister in law, the understanding from her mother, and the love of her daughter that she’d managed to keep her head above water. But she worries she won’t always be able to keep afloat.

 

Her drive home is gloomy, and she sits in the driver’s seat after parking for long minutes, the radio on in the background and tears welling in her eyes once more. She didn’t want to do council today. She didn’t want to listen as her past mistakes and desperate choices were drudged up in front of her for review and scrutiny. She didn’t want to sit quietly and humbly in front of a circle of people who had been there while she tried so hard to keep her country from falling apart, but who refused to recognize her contributions.

 

Ungratefulness was the most common word that popped into her head when she thought of the elders, but she’d never be able to say a word about it. She was no longer queen, and barely had any say on the council and so she kept her mouth shut and her hands clenched in her skirts while her brother placated her naysayers and looked at her like a lost cause.

 

Umama waits in her rooms as she brings Thandi in, the little girl still sleepy but almost awake now.

 

“How are you, Bibi?” Ramonda says, and Shuri shrugs.

 

“I’m fine. I’ve got council and no one to watch Thandi-”

 

“Which is why I’m here, my love.”

 

Ramonda then smiles and takes her granddaughter in her arms as Shuri makes a beeline for her closet. She’s got to change and get to the throne room in less than ten minutes and she was so tired that rushing around felt like the most daunting thing she had to do, but there was no time to waste on feeling bad about it. So she slings her lab clothes off in a hurry and runs her faucet to freshen up.

 

“And how is my little Thandiwe?” she asks sweetly.

 

“M’ok, Uma.”

 

“Did you have fun with your mother?”

 

Thandi gives an enthusiastic yes and Shuri smiles a little. She’d spent most of her time with her father on the holo, instead of acting as Shuri’s personal lab assistant the way she did most of the time, but Thandi babbled about getting to sit on Mama’s desk and play with the pads as if that had been the highlight of her day. And that little sweetness from her baby girl buoyed her. She decides, last minute, to put a little makeup on--something simple, just gloss and mascara and a little liner--and tugs on her boots as Thandi and Ramonda chatter about nothing.

 

“And I saw Baba! And he says hi, and he was sleepy, too,” she catches, just as she clears her closet. Shuri catches her mother’s eye over her daughter’s head and Ramonda’s face is pitying.

 

 _Don’t pity me_ , she wants to scream. _I’m not to be pitied._

 

“That sounds like a wonderful time. I’m sure he was happy to see you.”

 

Thandi nods and leans back against her grandmother’s chest, wiggling her legs out as she continued in detail about one of Tony’s stories. When Shuri leans down for a kiss, she pauses and grins, and pulls her mother’s face to hers, taking the kiss with a giggle and giving one of her own to Shuri’s cheek.

 

“Bye Mama!” she calls out, and Shuri manages to smile.

 

“Be good for your Uma, okay?” An elegant hand presses on her forearm and there’s questions in her mother’s eyes that she doesn’t want to answer right now. “After dinner, Umama,” she says softly. “I just…”

 

“Of course. Go. I don’t want you to be late.”

 

Shuri swallows anything else she wanted to say and leaves her bedroom, head high and her face a careful mask of indifference as she made her way to council.

 

* * *

 

She usually had headaches after council meetings but this one was so intense, she thought she’d throw up her lunch. Elders filtered from the throne room as T’Challa stopped to chat with each one, smiling, cool and effortless in how he conducted business. He was the perfect embodiment of a king and not for the first time did Shuri envy him. The people loved him, the elders adored him; the nasty bubble of anger and resentment rises in her gut and she swallows thickly to push it down. But nothing would help this headache except more pain relievers and a moment alone in her room.

 

Shuri slides off her seat and checks her kimoyos, reading through her messages as she walks slowly towards the door. All she wants is to slip past her brother and down the hall without being bothered. She didn’t want a half hearted attempt at forgetting his words at breakfast, nor did she want to play nice and talk to anyone who generally still saw her as a stain on Wakandan history. The first Queen regent in over three centuries and she’d completely screwed up the delicate balance between the tribes. Or, that’s what people were claiming, but Shuri knew that she couldn’t be held responsible for the fickle, disloyal actions of the now pardoned dissenters.

 

The way the tide had turned against her would sting forever, much in the way the outcome of the paternity reveal would ache like an unhealed bruise. She would never get over the hurt she’d felt upon seeing the papers, or the barely concealed look of disgust in Bucky’s eyes when he found out.

 

_So that’s why you wouldn’t tell me she was Steve’s._

 

Why had it mattered? Her daughter was half Wakandan either way anyone looked at it. But for some reason, the people thought of Steve Rogers as a hailed American ally, while they barely regarded Tony Stark with anything except suspicion and irritation. Maybe it was because of his reputation. Maybe because Tony had been married.

 

She didn’t know. She was tired of caring.

 

Before her thoughts could make the headache any worse, a gentle hand tapped  her on the shoulder and Nakia waved her over to a quiet, private corner.

 

“I was wondering if you wanted to help me with something,” the Queen says, kindness and understanding in her eyes. “I’m going to reorganize the outreach programs we’d started before the Snap, and I would really like to have you on the board.”

 

She appreciates the gesture more than Nakia can ever imagine, but she isn’t quite sure about the work.

 

“Why me?”

 

Nakia gives her a look, as if she should already know. “Because you are young and personable, and because years ago, we had talked about this very thing. Remember? After T’Challa took you to Oakland, we had such grand ideas about doing something like this for the diaspora.”

 

She sighs. She misses those days, the old ones, when the world seemed so bright and open. She remembered sitting in her lab, too, and talking about all of her plans with Folami and with Bucky, who had smiled and promised her he’d be there to see them all fall into place. That had been the start of something between them. She hates thinking about it now, because Bucky hated to look at her and Folami had died betraying her.

 

“I remember. I see no reason to not continue the work, but Nakia...I don’t know if I’m qualified to sit a board anymore. I’m not really qualified to do much of anything but tinker in my lab.” And even that was debatable. All she wanted to do nowadays was sleep and spend time with her daughter.

 

But Nakia seems to think otherwise. “No. No, you are still as brilliant and ingenious as you ever were. Life throws us setbacks, yes, but that does not mean you must treat them as closed doors. You are still capable and smart. You’re still the incredible princess the world was so curious about.”

 

Shuri wants to snort bitterly and vehemently deny that. She was no one’s princess; not even her own people’s. The title felt less like a birthright and a part of her now and more like a facade. Who was she really?

 

_No one._

 

But she refused to hurt Nakia by denying her. “I’ll give it a thought.” She tries for a smile and though it falls flat, it’s better than the ever present scowl she wore. “I haven’t had much energy to think about a lot lately. Thandi is always on full speed, and it’s a wonder I can keep up.”

 

“I still think you should find another nanny,” Nakia says, well meaning and gentle. Shuri shakes her head, though. Dakuri had been with Thandi since she was born and she was loathed to hand her daughter off to any other person, except her mother, her brother, or Nakia herself. It wasn’t that she didn’t trust other people, but Thandi was her only baby and one of the brighter spots in her life; she didn’t want to risk the chance of anything happening.

 

“Dakuri will be back within a few months, and besides, she’ll soon be off to the tutors,” she says by way of compromise, but Shuri knew she’d do no such thing. She’d tutor Thandi herself, probably with Kikade’s help, and that was that. “But don’t worry about that right now; she’s only two and half years old!”

 

Nakia smiles. “I remember when she was two and half _months_ old. Sweetest baby. Time’s gone by so fast.”

 

_Not fast enough._

 

With Nakia beside her, it was easier to approach T’Challa. She kept her face neutral and her answers were polite and respectful, though definitely lacking in their old, comfortable banter. They hadn’t talked like that around each other since her brother had come back from the dead. She had nothing to blame it on but her ruined reputation and the damage that three years had done.

 

“Will you be joining us for dinner, Shuri?” he asks, and she hates how soft his voice is or the odd look that’s always in his eye when he watches her. She hates it so much.

 

“I’ve actually got plans,” she tells him, which is mostly a lie. Her only plans were taking medicine and napping until her mother inevitably came to her door to pick her brain about what was bothering her. What could she say? _I’m always exhausted, I’m always sad, and I want to disappear and never return._ Her mother wouldn’t understand. Ramonda had never been anything but regal, even when the worst had happened and she’d lost her husband and then, two years later, her son.

 

“Ah. Well, then perhaps-”

 

“I think your sister is tired, husband,” Nakia interjects. Her tone is light and playful, but there is a sternness in it that Shuri appreciates. There would be no arguments. “She’s got a toddler to take care of and the entire science division to oversee...I think she deserves a little break, no?”

 

T’Challa nods, but she can clearly see he disagrees. She had no idea why he wanted her around. He didn’t even seem to like her much anymore, if this morning was anything to go by. It was an odd push and pull of berating her, chastising her for mistakes she’d made, and trying to draw her in close again. It was confusing and she was sick of it all.

 

“Tomorrow night, brother,” she says by way of compromise, and she nods her head and crosses her arms, as if on autopilot, before slipping out the throne room door.

 

Thandi is waiting for her when she gets in, and she lets the stress of the day melt when her daughter wraps her little arms around her neck and presses sticky kisses to her face.

 

“Were you good, Bibi?” The answer could go either way, really, depending on the mood her daughter was in. Some days, she was an absolute helion, running hither and yonder and causing mess after mess. Other days, she was a literal angel, with sweet smiles and happy chatter.

 

“Uh huh!” Thandi glances back to her grandmother for verification and Ramonda nods proudly.

 

“She was perfectly behaved, Bibi,” her mother says. “We did some reading and a little finger painting, but no messes.”

 

“I got cookie!” Thandi proclaims, holding up a fist full of soggy chocolate chip.

 

“Really, Mama?” she asks Ramonda, as she searches for a napkin. “She’ll ruin her dinner!”

 

Ramonda laughs lightly. “She won’t, trust me. That’s just something we tell children to keep them from rotting their teeth out. And she was so good for me! I had to give her something sweet as a reward.”

 

“Fine, fine. But no more cookies today, understand?”

 

Thandi nods solemnly, as if she had no intentions of asking for more cookies after supper. Shuri gives her a quick peck and a smile and wipes her hands. “We’ve gotta get you dressed for dinner, Bibi.” She suppresses her sigh and sets the little girl down to search for a decent dress or outfit for the dinner table. She looks up at her mother, who waits with a worried expression, and tries to ignore the elephant in the room.

 

“Would you mind taking her to the dining room?”

 

“Not at all. Are you’re not coming?”

 

Shuri shakes her head. “No. I’ve got work to finish and I’m not very hungry anyway.” At least she wasn’t lying about that. She hadn’t been very hungry in quite a while, actually, and only ate to keep herself from growing faint. “I’ll snack on some fruit if I happen to get an appetite. But I think Than Than’s taken all of mine.” She tries to lighten the mood and pretend nothing is wrong. She doesn’t want her mother to pry.

 

Ramonda seems to drop the questioning on the tip of her tongue. She calls Thandi over and takes out the hairbows holding her hair in place, and accepts the warm, wet towel that Shuri grabs from the bathroom. “Stand still, Lulu, let Uma wipe your face.”

 

There’s a muffled “yes, Uma”, and Thandi stands as still as she possibly can, though it’s not much. She squirms, and wiggles her feet and hums, and Shuri almost laughs at the sight of her impossibly regal mother tending to her wiggly daughter. But she’s wasting time by dawdling, so she gathers Thandi’s best sandals and a cute, printed pants set and hands them to her mother. Ramonda gestures towards the desk and finishes redoing Thandi’s hair, securing the bows perfectly, far better than Shuri had managed that morning.

 

And while dressing her granddaughter, she lifts her head and roots Shuri to the spot, the way only she had the power to do. There was going to be a discussion after all. The headache seemed to flare back full force.

 

“You need to see someone.”

 

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Shuri says, though she knows exactly what her mother meant.

 

“You can’t keep going on as if you’re fine when you aren’t.” Ramonda frowns, turns Thandi around, and adjusts the back of her frilly top. “You haven’t been yourself since the war, Bibi.”

 

“No one has, Mama,” Shuri says, frustration leaking into her voice. “What do you expect? A lot went on in a very short period of time. It takes more than a few years to recover from that.”

 

“I won’t disagree with you on that,” she says, “but there is the very real fact that you are in the public eye and a member of the royal family. You set an example, Shuri, you can not spend your days walking through life as though you are barely living!”

 

Shuri draws in a deep breath and tries not to scream, but the irritation seeps into her tone.

 

“I don’t want to be an example,” she says, her voice wavering. “I didn’t ask for any of this!”

 

Ramonda’s face hardens, and Thandi senses the change in atmosphere because she begins to whine a little.

 

“Uma, my bow tight!”

 

“Your bow is not, I’ve double checked,” Ramonda insists, curtly, and the little girl’s lip wobbles. Shuri hopes and shoots a quick prayer to Bast that her daughter doesn’t have a fit, not now, not right before dinner, but her prayers are ignored in the same way as they usually are. Thandi breaks out into a full cry and flops down on the floor, face turning red and legs kicking in anger.

 

“Is tight!” she wails, and Shuri crouches to pick her up and soothe her.

 

“Let me see, Bibi,” she says, trying to comfort her screaming tantrum, but it’s no use. She continues in spite of Shuri loosening the bow and Ramonda gets up from her seat, exasperation all over her face. Shuri presses her lips shut lest she say anything out of line. Her headache is almost unbearable at this point.

 

“And that is precisely her problem now,” her mother says, her voice disapproving and tight. “She’s spoiled because you won’t discipline her.”

 

“She’s not even three,” Shuri counters. “She doesn’t understand how to-”

 

“She would understand plenty if you would work with her! Instead, you spend all your time sleeping or working. And that is exactly what I meant...she suffers because you’re too prideful to get any sort of help!”

 

Shuri can feel hot tears in her eyes and she blinks hard and fast to keep them from falling. Her heart beats like a drum, her stomach churns, and she shakes her head angrily, frustration and the sobs of a toddler in her ear.

 

“I do what I can,” she says, nearly growling. “I am only one person and I can’t do it all!”

 

“That is what the help is for,” the queen mother says. And though Shuri knows she’s right, she just can’t do it. “You keep insisting you’ll wait on Dakuri, but Shuri, she’s going to be unavailable for quite some time! She has her own child to consider now, she can’t mother yours.”

 

“I don’t expect anyone else to mother her!” Shuri says. She can hear her voice rise and she fights to keep it down, but it’s so hard not to want to yell right along with Thandi. “I’m her mother! I just...I need help with getting her dressed or fed or having someone watch her-”

 

“And to tell her no and actually mean it,” Ramonda says almost cruelly. “She would not be half as spoiled if she had someone telling her how things are going to work without going back on their word.” She scoffs and turns away from the scene in front of her and Shuri breathes in deep, wiping tear streaked cheeks and pleading with Thandi to stop crying.

 

“It’s fine, Bibi, come on. For Mama?”

 

“I want Baba,” Thandi says, sniffling and rubbing her eyes. Shuri opens her mouth to say something, anything, but can’t figure out how to solve that issue, and Thandi starts to cry all over. _I want your Baba, too_ , her heart says, but she stuffs that sharp tinge down into the pit of her belly and tries for a compromise.

 

“It’s Baba’s bedtime, Bibi, we can call him tomorrow.” _I hope_. “But right now we’ve got to wash up and go to dinner, okay? With Auntie and Uncle. And if you want, you can have more cookies.”

 

Thandi seems to consider that and then nods her head and seems to make an effort to stop crying. “M’kay.”

 

“Thank you sweet girl,” Shuri breathes out, ignoring her mother’s scolding glance. “Do me a favor, okay? Go into the bathroom again and get up on Mama’s big chair and I’ll come in and redo your hair.”

 

Thandi nods again and runs into the bathroom and Shuri winces as she hears a bottle fall to the floor in a clatter.

 

“You can’t keep doing that.”

 

“I had no other options,” Shuri says, glaring at her mother. “She wouldn’t stop crying otherwise.”

 

“Do you really think he’ll answer the phone every time she’s out of line? He’s got a family of his own, Shuri. He can’t keep babysitting your daughter when it’s too tough for you!”

 

Shuri feels her temper skyrocket and she presses her hands to her heated face. “Are you kidding me?! That is _his_ daughter too! That is _his_ flesh and blood and he is just as responsible for rearing her as I am. It’s not my fault he’s not allowed here! I didn’t make that decision!”

 

Ramonda steps back and the look she gives Shuri could cut glass. But Shuri’s too angry to care. She was angry, and so tired, and she would have given anything to just disappear.

 

“None of this would have ever happened if you’d listened to me at the start,” Ramonda says coldly. “None of it! No crying child, no ruined youth. Your reputation, your crown, your sense of peace...all of it could have been intact if you’d have just listened! I told you when you decided to open your legs to that man that it would be nothing but a disaster, but no...you wouldn’t listen. Your refused to listen, and this is your lot.”

 

It feels like she’s standing underwater. She stands with her mouth agape and her heart breaking and she doesn’t bother hiding her tears.

 

“Wipe your face,” Ramonda says, and though her voice is still stern, Shuri thinks she hears something like an apology there, too. But it was too late and the damage was done.

 

It’s the truth, all of it.

 

She obeys her mother and straightens her face, wiping the tears viciously before turning back around and heading into the bathroom. Thandi waits with a handful of hair beads, sorting them by color quietly. Shuri kisses her head gently and fixes her hair quickly, then bends and fixes her pants set, too.

 

“You go and have dinner with Uma and Auntie and Uncle, okay?”

 

“M’kay.”

 

“I love you, Bibi. Be good, please? Be sweet for Mama.”

 

Thandi nods and takes off to the bedroom and joins her grandmother, who reaches out to pick her up as if nothing at all had ever occurred. Ramonda looks back with sad eyes and Shuri wants to hurl something heavy but keeps her posture straight and her face a mask.

 

And as soon as the door clicks shut, she collapses onto her bed and sobs into her pillows.

 

* * *

 

 

Thandi spends the night with her Uma because Shuri’s headache refuses to budge. It’s Ramonda’s way of saying sorry, Shuri is sure, but she refuses to accept the apology right that moment. She feels petty, angry, and raw still and she sleeps through breakfast and skips work to lay in bed and watch TV.

 

The shows are boring, and the movies don’t hold her attention, so when she gets a knock on the door, she gets up to answer with mild interest.

 

She is completely and utterly surprised to see Okoye at her door, and she lets her in silently.

 

They didn’t talk much, not anymore. Shuri knows her role in having Tony exiled and her conspiracy with Steve to have him beaten and she’s held onto a grudge as wide as a river for three years over it. A woman she’d once thought of as an older sister had become a stranger to her, and though it was another painful piece of the puzzle that was her life, she had tried dismissing Okoye’s importance in her life from her heart and mind.

 

It’d been almost impossible, though. And when the older woman waits for Shuri’s signal to sit, she feels a tangle twist around her heart so tight she has to sit herself and take in a breath.

 

“Is there anything I can help you with, Okoye,” Shuri asks, formal and polite and withdrawn. The Dora presses her lips tight and seems to be searching for words, so Shuri gets up and goes to her desk, taking out a flask of whiskey Tony had left behind and two small glasses.

 

“Drink?”

 

“Oh...I...thank you.” Okoye accepts the glass carefully and stares down into the cool, brown liquid for a long moment. When she raises her eyes, she looks as though she is fighting a storm.

 

“Is this his?”

 

Shuri knocks back her own shot and meets Okoye’s eyes cooly. “It is. You don’t have to drink it, if that bothers you.” No one had to do anything if they didn’t want, not for her sake. They could all leave her the hell alone while they were at it. But Okoye’s face is as sad as Shuri felt and so she refrains from spitting any venom her way.

 

“It doesn’t,” Okoye finally says, and she takes the shot quickly, then sits back in her chair and draws in a deep breath. She’s quiet for long minutes more, where Shuri pours them more shots and they drink, almost until the flask is empty. Shuri stares into the bottom and the idea of all of Tony’s whiskey being gone makes her feel panicky.

 

“I need to apologize,” Okoye finally says. She sounds as tired as Shuri feels.

 

“What for?” There were a few things Shuri could think of, but Okoye was prideful and she had a feeling she was thinking of something else entirely. “What are you sorry about?”

 

“I’m not sorry for what I did,” Okoye admends, lifting her head and Shuri snorts, because she’d expected that. “But I am sorry for hurting you in the process.”

 

“That’s not much of an apology,” she says dryly but it’s something and to be honest, she would take whatever she could get. “But it is accepted.” She plays with a thread on the hem of her shirt and tries not to cry again. She doesn’t think she has anything left to cry anyway. “And I’m sorry, too. For being so impossible.”

 

Okoye hums. “Accepted. Though, that is part of my job, you know. Protecting impossible people.” She attempts to smile and Shuri feels a little bit of the knot in her belly unravel, though the odd panicky feeling remains. There was no real reason to be so out of sorts about liqour but she was out of sorts about damned near everything. It was almost becoming a way of life.

 

“You are not impossible, Shuri,” Okoye says, her voice soft and emotion thrumming through it. “Whatever you’ve done and however anyone thinks of you...do not think I don’t care for you.”

 

“Then why?” She’s wanted to ask that for a long while now.

 

“Because I thought I was doing what was best. I thought...I thought I could save you. From hurt and heartache. I thought if I could sabotage whatever was growing between you and between Stark, you would be safe.” She shrugs and blows out a breath, tears clogging her throat and Shuri bites her lip to keep it from wobbling. “I should have known it would never work. He was caught in your current the first time he ever lay eyes on you.”

 

She snorts and waves her hand as if Okoye were wrong but she had the truth of it. She’d known just how caught Tony had been even way back when and used it to get what she wanted. What she hadn’t counted on was the silly distraction to turn into an affair that had given her a daughter and a heartbreak like nothing else. She had never expected to feel anything but sorry for Tony Stark, but here she was. They'd gotten caught in each other's currents, and she still spun around helplessly in his sometimes.

 

“Regardless of all that, what I did was wrong and you were right to try and stop me.” She sighs and stretches her legs out in her chair. The temptation to drink the rest of the whiskey in the flask overwhelmed her panic at no longer having it and she pops the lid, chugging it down without hesitation. She wipes her mouth and lets the burn of the whiskey crawl down her throat into her chest. It feels better than this emptiness inside her.

 

“That goes without saying,” Okoye agrees. “But we can’t change what happened then. We can only move forward. And to do that, it would be beneficial if you talked to someone.”

 

Shuri almost laughs because she should have known it would come to this. “I’m not interested in laying my sins on the table for someone to pick apart, no thank you. As much as you think that would help...it wouldn’t. It’d just be peeling the scab off over and over.”

 

“But that is how you heal,” Okoye says gently. Shuri presses her lips together and blows out a hard breath. She didn’t want to admit that maybe Okoye, and her mother, were right. She just wanted to sleep some more. “You cannot heal if you deny that there is anything wrong.”

 

“I never said there wasn’t,” she counters.

 

“No. But you are subconciously pretending that everything will be fine if you just ignore it. It won’t. And perhaps it’s unfair to use your daughter as a catalyst...but why not try, at least for her?”

 

Shuri shakes her head and growls in frustration. “You know what would happen if it gets out I’m seeing someone? The papers will make the case that I’m plying for sympathy and attention. Bah! I don’t have the stomach for it anymore, Okoye.”

 

“The paternity leak was a fluke, princess,” Okoye says, her eyes sad. “That should have never happened, and the person responsible has been punished accordingly. I doubt any therapist you see would leak what you tell him or her to the press. They know the consequences for exposing a royal's medical history--exile and a strip of their citizenship.”

 

“They know. But do they truly care? That’s what bothers me. No one cares about me as a person anymore. They only care about what I do, because it makes them feel good that the lofty can fall as well.” She struggles not to cry, anger at how the public had turned against her still fresh like a new cut. “I just want to be left alone, at this point. I don’t even care if they like me anymore. I don’t care about anything.”

 

“And that, princess, is the problem.” Okoye leans forward and warm, calloused hands take one of her own. It’s been a long time since the general had held her hand like this, the way she used to when the world seemed too overwhelming and the days ahead daunting. She remembers holding Okoye’s hand in her own during the months after the Snap, when her mother had barricaded herself in her room and the entire world had been counting on one young woman to fix everything.

 

“You call it a problem, I call it a realistic reaction.” She squeezes the hand anyway and closes her eyes for a moment. “But if you really think I would do better by telling all my business-”

 

“I do,” Okoye says, with the half smirk of someone who had probably won.

 

“Then I suppose I can at least give it a try. I’m not promising anything but...okay.”

 

Okoye says nothing but her body seems far more relaxed and Shuri wonders if her mother had something to do with this. She almost asks, thinks better of it, and lets the question go. Who really cared at this point? At least Okoye seemed to be warming up to her again, and that was worth more than anything.

 

“Another tip, if you don’t mind,” Okoye says, after long minutes of simply sitting. “Take a break.”

 

Shuri blinks. “I’m taking one today, actually.”

 

“No, no, I mean a real break. A vacation. When your brother reopens the borders--and trust me, he will--you should spend some time just...wandering. It would be good for you I think.”

 

“I’m not leaving Thandi.”

 

“I don’t expect you to. Though hovering isn’t healthy either, but that’s for your therapist to tell you and not me. I’m no doctor.” Okoye unwounds their fingers and the loss is heavier than Shuri imagined it would be. She clasps her hands together to savor the lingering warmth. “I’m simply a humble general, doing her best. That is all.” She sighs dramatically and this time, she really does smile, and so does Shuri.

 

“Fine. I’ll take a vacation and get out of everyone’s hair.”

 

“But first, see someone.”

 

Shuri throws her hands up, defeated. “But first...I’ll see someone.”

 

* * *

 

She puts it off for as long as she can, because she hadn’t been lying when she said she wasn’t in a hurry to tell anyone all her problems. They were burdens, sure, but they were hers and she really didn’t want anyone judging her for simple, petty fears and anxieties she had. Of course, the fall back from Thandi’s DNA results leaking had made her shy on any medical professionals, even down to her own personal doctor. But Thandi needed a new pediatrician and so she’d allowed Nakia to appoint a new one, trusting her sister in law even if she didn’t trust the doctor herself.

 

It was that doctor that recommended her to a therapist, a friend from the university that specializes in mental health. Shuri kept the number stored in her kimoyos for weeks before another tantrum of Thandi’s and another fight with her brother pushed her to consider maybe figuring out her role in all of this. She wasn’t innocent in the conflicts, she knew, but she wasn’t sure how to stop feeling this way.

 

When she finally called in for an appointment, the receptionist seemed almost surprised that she was willing to wait a few days, insisting she be bumped up to tomorrow afternoon. Shuri went along with it; she had a feeling if she did wait, she’d chicken out and decide not to go along with the visit.

 

A fear, mostly of the unknown, spreads through her belly the morning of. She takes breakfast with Thandi on their balcony and calls in to delegate some of the more vital updates she had planned for the Panther suit to Kikade. Thandi bounces off to spend time with her Auntie, who has a rare day off, and then Shuri heads towards the medical center, alone, foregoing the use of any Dora for the first time in a long while. They weren’t really necessary in her opinion, not in the safety of her own country, but she understood T’Challa’s precautions. There were still a subset of people who were angry about the coup and her role in squashing it and so, there was still what could be considered a valid threat to her safety.

 

For some reason, she decides to take the chance. The drive there is quiet, almost too much so, and the nervousness in the pit of her stomach threatens to make her turn right back around and reschedule. But she kept going, if only because she had a feeling that if she didn’t show up, Okoye would know and then that would be another lecture, and she was tired of lectures. Maybe they were done with good intentions, but they were wearing on her psyche. And the anticipation of what this visit was about was wearing on it, too.

 

For the fourth time that week, after parking and finding she had twenty minutes to spare, she calls Tony just to calm down.

 

He answers on the second ring, with a sharp, bright “hello” and she’s amused at how blase he is about seeing her alone. Again.

 

“If you’re going to tell me your brother is being a dick about you in the council again, I will personally find a way to come kidnap you and take you out for donuts.”

 

She snorts out a laugh, and the nerves start to melt away, a little at a time. “He’s going to be a dick about it as long as it takes to mend bridges. I did fuck up the unity of the tribes, Tony. Not that it was really my fault-”

 

“Damn right it wasn’t.” He sniffs and Shuri frowns, leaning forward towards the holo to see what the problem is.

 

“Are you getting a cold?”

 

“Nope, just seasonal allergies, which, by the way, are ten times worse when you’re in the country than when you’re in the semi suburbs. I didn’t realize this, but apparently, my immune system really hates dogwood trees.”

 

“Should I send you something?” she immediately offers, because that's how they operated now. He’d send Thandi and her gifts--candy and toys and clothes and shoes--and she’d send him bottles of the serum or pain medications wrapped up between blankets and exclusive Wakandan wines. None of this was really legal, not with the restrictions on trade and travel still in place, but with a little help from W’Kabi and some blind eyes from Nakia and her mother, she’d been able to maintain more than just a virtual correspondance with Tony since the exile.

 

“If you don’t mind. Years of research and billions of dollars later, and there’s only one or two medicines available, with or without a prescription, that actually puts a dent in this shit.” He wrinkles his nose up adorably and shakes his head, then lets out a sneeze that makes her giggle. He looks almost upset about it, but he smiles, so she knows he’s glad he could make her laugh. “Yeah, send whatever you’ve got. And maybe some of those little chocolates you sent me for Father’s Day last year? Absolutely amazing with the cherry wine.”

 

“Please tell me you haven’t drank all of it,” she says, leaning back in her seat and keeping her eye on the time. “That wine is limited edition. I think I sent you the last four bottles I had.”

 

He looks almost sheepish. “I’ve got half a bottle in my fridge right now. But yeah, two out of those four are still in the wine cellar back at the compound. Eventually I’ll get around to grabbing them...and everything else…” He trails off and blows out a breath and she can see his mood change almost instantaneously, though he tries to play it off.

 

“I’m going to see a therapist,” she says quickly, to keep his mind off his own issues with the divorce and the custody proceedings. Pepper was playing hardball and wanted full custody with limited visitation and Shuri still couldn’t figure out why if not for some fucked up sense of revenge. And while she could agree that the woman had every valid reason to hate them both the rest of her life, she couldn’t grasp why she’d want to drag her son through all of this as well. Tony was pretty irritated about it, but his last couple of holos had suggested he was going to stop being nice and play at her own game.

 

“I’ve been telling you to do that since Than Than was still in diapers.” He raises a brow. “She is out of diapers, now, right? She told me she had to go potty the other day and I assumed-”

 

Shuri laughs. “She’s been potty trained for months, Tony. We rarely have slip ups.” Rarely, in at least once a week, and last night she’d peed the bed, but Shuri was still proud of how advanced her daughter was on all her milestones. She couldn’t think of any other child at her age with a vocabulary that broad. “But yeah, uh...Okoye sort of suggested I really needed to see someone or I’d make my daughter miserable.”

 

“I can totally imagine her saying something like that,” he says in a dry voice. Tony would never care for Okoye, no matter how much time passed and Shuri really didn’t blame him. “Granted, she does care an awful lot about you, so if she said something and you heeded it...I guess that’s a good thing.”

 

“Maybe. I’m just…” She growls and lets her head fall back onto the seat, staring up at the ceiling of her car as she tried to work out her hesitations over seeing a therapist. “I’m scared, Tony. What if what happened last time happens this time? What if what I say is spread all over the press?” She shudders at the thought. But Tony makes a face of disbelief and moves to offer her reassurance.

 

“That was a fluke. Trust me when I say that anyone in Wakanda who hasn’t been under a rock in the last five years knows better than to try that shit again.” She sees the flash of anger in his eyes and knows hers mirror the expression. “Everything will be kept under wraps, Shuri. Don’t worry about that. Go. Unleash your troubled mind onto the skilled, compassionate masters of mental health. And grabs some tips for me, too, while you're at it.”

 

Shuri lets him go with a quick smile and realizes her misgivings have all but disappeared. She walks into the expansive, tastefully decorated medical center without any fanfare and greets the receptionist neutrally. The girl is young, probably still in university, and as sweet as can be, with a wide and warm smile and gracious demeanor.

 

“Right this way, your Highness,” she says, leading her down a corridor into the offices of the doctor, one N’Yade Dimbunga. “The doctor will be with you shortly; she’s had to make a few calls, but she says to get comfortable and if you need anything, to just let me know.”

 

“Thank you, Adani,” Shuri says softly, smiling genuinely for the first time in ages. It was amazing what a little kindness could do.

 

She wanders around the room and takes in the lovely decor, sits on the plush couch and reads the doctor’s credentials on the wall. None of them were anything to sneeze at, of course, but the true test of merit would be if she could make Shuri feel secure enough to open up. The sweet receptionist had been a lovely start; she only hopes that the rest of her initial consultation would go this nicely.

 

Dr. Dimbunga slips into the room quietly, smile on her face and her body relaxed and respectful, as she greets her.

 

“It’s a pleasure, your Highness!” she says and Shuri gets the impression that she’s being authentic. “When Adani told me you’d be on the schedule, I must admit I was excited to finally meet the woman who invented the reconstruction system I use so much. I can’t tell you how many patients I’ve had who have come out of that system far better than simple therapies have done for them.”

 

“I can’t take all of the credit,” she insists, because she really couldn’t. The blueprints for that system, the one that had helped Bucky Barnes and many others after him, had been laid in stone years and years before by her grandmother Thandiwe. She’d simply built on it, perfected it, and kept advancing it until it was where it was today. And it was one of the first things she so very much wanted to take with her past borders, when the country was opened and the king’s embargo was lifted. The world needed that sort of machine.

 

“I’ve read extensively about your grandmother, trust me. An amazing woman. She paved the way for where all of us are in the fields of technology and medicine are. I consider her a true pioneer.”

 

Shuri’s smile softens. She’d never gotten to meet her grandmother, but had always idolized her. “It’s why I named my daughter after her. Hopefully…” She shrugs and trails off, but Dr. Dimbunga nods and seems to understand where she was going.

 

“Hopefully so. There’s still lots of work to be done to bridge that gap, but I believe it can be bridged. I’m nothing if not a futurist.” She sits back and taps on her pad, then gestures for Shuri to lay back and relax. “Do get comfortable, Princess Shuri,” she starts, but Shuri stops her.

 

“Just Shuri is fine. At least in here. I don’t want to be anything but that.”

 

“I understand. Shuri...well, make yourself comfortable. We’ll just start with some of the basics, get to know each other. You can ask me anything you’d like and feel free to decline to answer anything you want as well. Just remember, the more I know, the more I can help you navigate your emotions and feelings so you’ll feel better in the long run, okay?”

 

“Okay.”

 

“Good. Let’s start with the easiest, but sometimes the most difficult, question to answer. What made you come in to see me, and what do you need?”

 

* * *

 

She leaves her appointment feeling almost brand new. It’s as if someone had taken the ever present weight on her chest and pulled it up high enough that she could breathe without struggling. The weight still hovered, of course, but she could at least get some relief for the time being, and that was a win if she said so herself.

 

She washes up for dinner with her family, taking her time in choosing what to wear because for the first time in ages, she wanted to look like she cared enough to put in an effort. A cropped red sweater, high waist dark pants and cute strappy heels took her from casual to cool in less than a minute. She pulled her braids up into a simple large bun and slipped on solid gold hoops, but something was still missing. Shuri hunted around in her jewlery box for a necklace to tie everything together and couldn’t find anything she wanted, until she remembered the slim, silver box that still lay in her night stand under lock and key. She hadn’t worn it since that night, but she’d never forgotten about it.

 

The nano metal was cool to the touch and slipped through her fingers like water, and the single red diamond glittered beautifully on the end of the chain. She put the necklace on and glanced at herself in the mirror, marveling at how absolutely flawless the diamond was, something she hadn’t paid that much attention to. It was cut so that the gem seemed to fire from the inside, like there was a living dragon trapped in the intricate red oval nestled in the silver metal. Shuri presses her hand to her heart where the diamond lay and thought about the man who’d given it to her over three years before.

 

She wonders if he still remembered that night, or if he’d pushed it from his mind the way she’d tried so hard to do every birthday after. She still had flashbacks routinely, of his mouth on the most secret places of her, and his fingers, and his cock, too. She remembers almost too much about that night, even the pictures he’d taken, ones that had been the beginning of the end of their clandestine affair. She wonders if he still had them, if he took them out every now and then and remembered every orgasm the way she did.

 

Probably not, she thinks almost bitterly. Tony had moved on, and whatever relationship they had now was strictly platonic and necessary. They were coparenting a daughter and occasionally shared their worries and woes, but nothing more. If anything, she could say Tony Stark was her friend now. And she would have to make do with that.

 

The rumors were right. She’d never be more than a white man’s discarded mistress.

 

Tired of the memories, she shuts the nightstand and locks it carefully, then slips her kimoyos on and heads out her door to dinner. Thandi and Nakia meet her halfway there and her daughter wiggles off her aunt’s hip to bound over to her mother.

 

“Hi, Bibi! Did you miss me?”

 

“Uh huh! Mama, give me kiss!”

 

Shuri couldn’t resist that sort of demand and gave in happily, taking her daughter into her arms and covering her with kisses on her cheeks and forehead. Thandi giggles and presses her own kiss to Shuri’s nose, then leans back with arms spread wide so Shuri will spin her around. It was so easy to forget how difficult waking up could be with a baby girl so sweet. She wishes everyday could be this nice, and hopes that with her visits to the therapist, they possibly could be.

 

Umama and T’Challa wait in the dining room, the starter courses already on the table.

 

“I didn’t realize we were late,” Shuri says apologetically, greeting her mother and brother with a tentative smile. “Sorry about that. I got a little behind with my appointment.”

 

“How did it go, Bibi?” her mother asks, and Shuri sits down after getting Thandi situated in her own chair, the booster seat assisting her in reaching the big table. “Is Dr. Dimbunga a good fit?”

 

Shuri nods, and shoots Nakia a thankful smile. “She’s wonderful, actually. Very understanding, calming, gentle. She didn’t ask me too much today. She only wanted to break ground, she said. We went over some of the reasons I was coming to see her and she outlined a few of the ways we could start getting into the more difficult subjects, so that I wouldn’t be overwhelmed.”

 

Shuri takes a swig of water and thinks about her appointment, about the peace she felt afterward, and how tempted she was to call Tony to tell him. But she’d remembered that calling him for every little thing, especially stuff that didn’t pertain to their child, would be pushing the boundaries of their relationship. And though it had been painful to, she kept her fingers off the dial button to New York.

 

“I’m glad to hear it,” T’Challa says, and his smile isn’t nearly as strained as it usually had been. Even so, there was still that odd look in his eyes, the one that had been there since he’d come back from the soul world. Shuri takes in slow breaths to push the irritated feeling out of her body and focuses on coaxing Thandi to eat her greens.

 

Dinner is pleasant, though it goes by far too fast and before she knows it, it’s evening and her daughter is protesting against sleep. Whatever good Nakia had done in keeping Thandi calm seems to go out the window, but Shuri’s better prepared to deal with the tantrum, and one stern, almost uncharacteristic 'no' settles Thandi down from nearly wailing to simply sniffling pitfiully when she refuses to allow her more than one cookie for dessert.

 

“Why, Mama?” the little girl asks, batting her big hazel eyes as if she thought it would change her mama’s mind. And usually, Shuri had to admit, it did. Those eyes were far too much like Tony’s for her to be able to resist her. Whatever grace Bast had decided to bestow upon her lingered for the remainder of the night and Shuri’s patient, but no nonsense explanation of why eating too many cookies was a bad idea satisfied her daughter. She yawns and asks to sit her mother’s lap as they finish their desserts, and the chatter around the table wraps up.

 

“Might I walk you two to your rooms?” T’Challa asks, as they clear the the dining room and the servants began to clean. Shuri can’t think of any solid reason to say no, other than she really didn’t want to spoil her relatively decent mood by arguing with him again. It seemed that no matter what they talked about, they never could agree on anything nowadays, unless they limited their conversations to something superficial, like upgrades to his suit or ideas of what to get Umama for her birthday. And yet, she craved the kind of relationship they’d had before the snap. She missed her big brother, not the king he was now, or the person she’d grown to be in his abscence.

 

She could only hope that eventually, she’d be able to have that with him again.

 

_One step at a time._

 

“Of course.” At the sound of her uncle’s deep voice, Thandi turns her head and offers him a sleepy smile.

 

“Story, Uncle?” she asks sweetly, and T’Challa leans forward to press a kiss to her little nose.

 

“Of course, darling girl. Whatever story you want.”

 

They walk side by side, wordlessly, until she gets to her rooms and types in the code. It’s dark inside, and warm, as summer kicks into high gear and the nights get hotter. As always, her mind follows the calendar from July to the months after; September would be Thandi’s third birthday and November would be her 25th, and Shuri wonders sometimes how she’d gotten through these last few years mostly intact. Broken, battered, and worse for wear, but she was still breathing, and that was something.

 

“I had something I wanted to talk to you about,” T’Challa starts, as Shuri plops a sleepy Thandi into her bed and peels off the toddler’s shoes. She digs a night gown from her drawer and pulls it over Thandi’s head, then helps her strip out of her dinner dress. “Of course, it can wait until after story time, but…”

 

“If it’s about the fight the other day...I’m sorry.”

 

T’Challa opens his mouth to say something, but Shuri holds up a hand. “Let me finish. I was out of line for challenging you in front of the others that way. I should have taken up my objections to the trade embargo extension in private.”

 

“You are a member of the council as well as any of us are, Shuri,” her brother says. “I suppose I need to remember that you aren’t simply the little girl running to the lab to tinker all day. You’ve got as much of a right to give your opinion on political matters as I do.” He glances down, almost as if he were ashamed of his harsh tone and sharp words days before. “I believe we all forget you were regent of this country for several years.”

 

Shuri breathes in hard through her nose and tries to keep her snarky comment to herself. It was a lovely night, and she refused to spoil it.

 

“To be fair,” she says, as a sort of compromise, “I do rarely ever speak up anymore.”

 

“You have good reason. We have been almost too cruel.”

 

“The council has their reasons, too.” She offers him a tight smile, and though she doesn’t feel the truth of her words, she knows that there probably is at least a bit behind them. “They remember those three years in a different way than I do. So maybe they feel they are in much better hands with you as king versus the failure I was as queen.”

 

T’Challa frowns, and shakes his head, and she wants so very badly for him to deny her words, but he goes quiet again. And then he moves to her bed, and sets on the edge of it, his hand gentle on Thandi’s brow as she shifts into a more comfortable position and lets her eyes flutter open.

 

“What story shall we tell tonight, Thandi?”

 

“Pea! Princess Pea,” she says with a sleepy grin and T’Challa raises a brow.

 

“I’m afraid I don’t quite know that one,” he says apologetically, but Shuri laughs and slips into bed beside her daughter.

 

“Come on brother, get on the other side. I’ll tell this one. And next time, Bibi, we’ll get Uncle to tell a Wakandan story and not an American.”

 

Thandi nods and holds out her little arms to her uncle as he sinks into bed beside them. Shuri starts the story softly, her voice a low, soothing lilt. T’Challa nestles into the pillows with Thandi and holds her close, and when the girl is finally asleep and the story is mostly done, he lifts his eyes to his sister and listens as she finishes to the end.

 

“I’ve never heard that one,” he says, “but perhaps I’ll have to get you to tell it again. I quite liked it.”

 

“The Princess and the Pea is an American classic,” she quips, stretching out with a grunt on the bed. It’d been a long day and she was sleepy as well, though she knew her brain would probably keep her up for long hours more. “I learned that one from Jane Foster. She used to tell it in the lab when Thandi was a little thing.”

 

“And you’ve been telling it ever since.”

 

“Mmm. There are some good memories of that time, believe it or not. Spaced apart by the worst of it, but some nice things all the same.”

 

T’Challa reaches over and brushes a stray curl from his niece’s forehead. “Such is life. Even in the darkest of times, there are spots of light.” He smiles and then leans down to kiss her forehead and the girl sighs in her sleep. Shuri waits for the inevitable question, one her brother had yet to actually ask her and one she’d never been able to answer completely.

 

So when he meets her eyes and studies her in the warm light of her room, she isn’t caught offguard when he finally does say it.

 

“Why him, Bibi?”

 

It’d been a long time since he’d called her the diminutive, the cherished nickname all the girls in her culture were called as children. She felt her insides warm as at the same time, her tongue tied and her heart pounded at the thought of her daughter’s father.

 

“I’ve been trying to figure that out for years now,” she says with a dry laugh.

 

“I only wonder...why not the Captain instead? I’ve gone over this time and again and can’t quite reconcile the girl who fell in love with Sergeant Barnes and nearly fought me over the right to pursue him to the girl who would fall for Tony Stark.”

 

Shuri shrugs because she didn’t have an answer for that either, at least not one that didn’t sound pitiful.

 

“He needed to be fixed, and I wanted to fix him,” she says, and T’Challa sucks his teeth so loudly she rolls her eyes. “I’m not telling you this to be judged, brother.”

 

“I’ll hush.”

 

“Good.” She tries, in as many words as she can think of, to explain her pull to Tony. It was difficult to describe it, though she very well could feel it even still, and by the time her words had faltered and her throat was thick with regret and what ifs, her brother’s eyes had softened to something like understanding.

 

“I didn’t expect to care so much about him. I didn’t even expect to really want him. But I did.” _I do_ , she almost whispers, but there wasn’t any use. That was a ship long sailed. “Anyway, I did a lot of things wrong with Tony and hurt people in the process...and I’ll always regret that.”

 

“But you don’t regret him.”

 

Shuri’s smile aches. “Nope. Not even a little bit.” She hugs her daughter close and breathes in and out, deeply, until she’s sure she won’t cry. “Part of me wishes I could.”

 

He lets her have a moment before he gets into why he’d come to her room to begin with.

 

“I’ve thought more about the embargo.”

 

“And?”

 

“We’ll lift it. Probably not until next year or so. But I suppose we could at least lift the travel ban...open the borders a bit, give people access to the outside.” She holds her breath, and waits for him to finish. “And by people...yes, I mean you.”

 

She can’t help her grin. “Did Okoye say something to you? Because I feel like she did.”

 

T’Challa lets out a soft laugh. “She may have mentioned you wanting to take a trip.”

 

“She pretty much told me I needed a vacation. I can’t say I disagree.”

 

“Then go.” He tugs at one of her braids and she feels as though she’s seeing the man she’d grown up with, hanging on to his shirt sleeves, following behind him in the gardens. “Take Thandi with you and explore for a while. I think we’ll manage without you.”

 

Shuri beams, harder than she has in a long time, and kisses her brother’s cheek. “Thank you,” she breathes, and her chest feels even lighter at the thought of a trip.

 

T’Challa stays for a long while more. They talk about the past, though not about the years between the Snap and the Fix, and about the future, about plans for Wakanda and for their people. They talk about lessons their father had taught them and ones they’d learned on their own. And they talk about plans for her vacation and security features, the dull stuff, though discussion about what hotels and resorts to hit up had her more excited than she’d been in a long time.

 

She falls asleep with the sound of cicadas outside her window and the soft breath of her daughter on her neck.

 

* * *

 

Shuri takes to calling the vacation the European Adventure, because their plans to leave Wakanda mostly involved the European continent, extending from Italy all the way up to London. Shuri makes plans to hit a few countries in Africa as well, most notably Nigeria and Egypt and Morocco. Thandi is excited in her own way, though Shuri knows she doesn’t quite grasp the concept of leaving the country since she never had before. But the closer they got to leaving, the more Thandi seemed to understand why her mother was so ecstatic to be going. It was something new, and Thandi was always up for something new.

 

Of course she had to have security to follow, so Okoye personally picked three Dora for her to take with her; two of whom had been old friends of hers from before. There was a disconnect there now, but Shuri had gotten used to it and didn’t begrudge them quite as much as she had before. They would follow her from country to country, from hotel to hotel, and serve as bodyguards and protector of the Princess and her daughter.

 

Shuri kept up with her therapy appointments between planning and scheduled a few via holo while she was gone. Those Monday afternoon trips to see Dr. Dimbunga had been a lifesaver and her relationships with her family as well as how she began to approach her work and place as a member of the royal family had improved as well. Council was still as tedious as ever and there were still disagreements and arguments, but nothing she couldn’t overcome with some of the coping techniques N’Yade had given her. Though their relationship had began professionally, she honestly began to consider the doctor a friend.

 

Somewhere in the middle of all this, she found she didn’t feel the need to run and turn to her phone and call Tony the way she had before. Since all correspondence was still dependent on her initiation, there were days and days where she didn’t even send so much as a message, and she felt terrible about the almost abrupt lack of contact. But Umama or Nakia had filled in for her in regards to letting him see Thandi and she got earfuls of cheerful, childish babbling about what Thandi and her Baba had talked about that day.

 

Perhaps she could call him while on vacation. Maybe she’d even send him a little gift, as a way of saying sorry for going awol on him.

 

There was the strict admonition--a suggestion, her brother had said, but in truth she knew as really a command--to stay away from the US. The time wasn’t right for travelling to America, at least not for the Princess, though Nakia herself frequently flew to Oakland to oversee the building of the large outreach center there. And Shuri would be allowed to go once everything was finished, which would be within the next year or so. But not right now, and as much as she itched to pop over to the States, just to sait her curiosity, she decided her brother was right.

 

It was much harder to cut ties and keep things platonic if one dwelled on the what could have been and chased after a dream.

 

They leave on a bright, August morning, with the sun high in the sky and the air warm and sweet. She says goodbye to her mother and brother and sister in law, promising to send pictures and video and to keep in touch. Thandi babbles all the way to the airport; she clutches her doll and wiggles her legs in her car as she and Shuri are driven up the winding road to Wakanda International. She’d opted to take something lowkey out of the country, a regular flight from Birnin Zana to Lagos, their first stop, which was only a few hours over and would ease Thandi into travelling. It was a good thing, too, because by the time the plane landed in Nigeria, her baby was antsy and ready to hit the ground running.

 

Over the next few weeks, they explore like regular people. The Dora keep out of costume, wearing civilian clothing and accompanying the princess as if they were simply a group of friends. It’s easier to pretend she wasn’t on her own this way, though their answers to her questions are polite and detached, and the conversations between them seem to exclude their charge. She wishes, more than once, that she’d just taken Okoye after all, but the general couldn’t shirk her duties to the king and claimed she wasn’t in a mood to see Europe anyway. Shuri snorts, knowing good and well she had other reasons, most notably a new girlfriend she’d been seeing for a couple of months.

 

Dakuri has her baby when they’re in Marrakesh, and Shuri sends her back a beautifully handcrafted bassinet. She’s not surprised when the nanny sends in her resignation a little while later, though she is saddened. Even so, it’s probably for the best. Dakuri’s little boy is a beautiful child and needed his mother’s attention more than Shuri’s daughter did; she’d have to make do with what she had now.

 

And really, Thandi was doing exceptionally well on the go. They hit one city and the next and spent most of their days moving through marketplaces and shopping centers, exploring museums, roaming the beaten paths of whatever country they were in. By the time they arrive in Italy, Thandi’s practically a new child, all sweet smiles and exhuberant questions about what they were doing and where they were. She rarely acted out, except when tired, and the tantrums had cooled into something more like a soft whine if she were upset about anything.

 

It was while talking to her therapist about the change in her daughter that Shuri realized that maybe all Thandi need was attention and something to occupy her ever growing, ever curious mind. She’d have to look into getting her started on some advanced placement courses, the kind her Baba had began her on as a toddler, when they got back to Wakanda.

 

From Italy, they hit up Austria and curved through Eastern Europe to Budapest and Prague, then move over to Brussels and finally, Paris. Thandi marvels at the buildings and the people and chatters with everyone who’ll stop to talk to a curly haired little girl with wide hazel eyes and a beaming smile. The souvenirs collect in their luggage and the Dora remain detached, until the trip is essentially just Shuri and her baby girl, the two of them in their own little world between hotels and resorts and luxurious chalets in the Swiss Alps.

 

And then, three days before Thandi’s third birthday, she decides to call Tony, if only so he can wish her a happy one the way he had on her first and second. It wasn’t the same as being there in person, but she couldn't be in New York, not yet, and he couldn’t come to Wakanda...though she wondered if perhaps he could meet her while on vacation.

 

No...no that would be asking too much.

 

To her surprise, when she dialed out with Thandi in her lap, she didn’t see Tony’s face but got Happy Hogan on the other end, looking all the world as confused about how the holo worked as anyone who never used it would be. Shuri almost giggles but instead, offers a polite, courteous hello in his direction and he finally figures out how to get the screen working so he can see them both.

 

“Oh, uh...hey there!”

 

“Mr. Hogan, it’s nice to finally meet you.” She’d heard all sorts of stories about Happy, Tony’s long time employee and one of his dearest friends and it was nice to know that he and Tony were close enough still that he allowed him to answer his holos. “We were looking for Tony.”

 

“Yeah, he’s in the city right now.” He moves this way and that, still trying to adjust to the intricacies of the system, and Thandi watches him with unusual quiet, her interest piqued at the new person in front of her. “Got me watching the house and everything.” Happy makes a face, one that speaks of unpleasant things and Shuri quickly deduces this has something to do with Jude and with Pepper Potts. “Remind me never to get married, okay? I really don’t want to have to deal with a divorce.”

 

“Duly noted,” she says solomnely because she can relate. She had no real intention of marrying anyone; the idea made her shiver with an uncomfortable image of being tied down and held in a cage. “Only if you’ll remind me as well.”

 

Happy snorts. “Surprised you aren’t already snatched up, actually. I mean, you are a princess still, yeah?”

 

Shuri raises a brow but doesn’t take offense. Tony had told her Happy was a blunt person. “I am. By the skin of my teeth,” she adds under her breath but he catches it and actually laughs. “This one is a bit more of a princess than I am, at least nowadays.”

 

“Ah, and who might this be?” Happy leans in, his face warm and friendly and Thandi smiles, waving the way she was wont to do with people she’d never met. “She looks oddly familiar, you know? Like...I’ve seen this one before. Somewhere. I wonder whose munchkin she is.”

 

Thandi giggles and the look on Happy’s face warms Shuri’s heart. “Are you going to tell the nice man your name, Bibi?” she says, urging her to speak up. “It’s alright; he’s a friend of your Baba.”

 

“Is Baba home?” Thandi asks in Xhosa, leaning up so she could get a better look at Happy. When he doesn’t respond, she frowns and turns to her mother, who tries hard not to laugh.

 

“English, Bibi, Mr. Hogan doesn’t know Xhosa.”

 

She bobs her head and tries again. “Baba home, Hoagie?”

 

Happy’s chuckle is pure and pleased as punch. “No, sorry about that, little bit. He’s out working on some things right now, but I’ll be sure to tell him you called.”

 

“Awww.” Thandi pouts, and Shuri soothes her by promising to call again later.

 

“I mean, that’ll probably work. But I don’t see why you have to wait and call him if you managed to get out of the gilded prison.”

 

Shuri frowns. “Wakanda is not a prison, Mr. Hogan.”

 

“Hoagie!” Thandi says happily, hopping off her mother’s lap to bound around the room and chant it over and over.

 

“She’s the only person in the world who can call me that,” Happy grumbles, but there’s no malice behind it. “Anyway, what I’m sayin’ is, the place has been on lockdown for what...three years now?”

 

“Nearly. We’ve had good reason for it.”

 

“Yeah, yeah, I’m not gonna argue that. I do think it’s kinda shitty to keep Tony out.”

 

She purses her lips and shrugs because she felt the same but still couldn’t do a damned thing about it. “You’re telling me. What is the term you use there? Preaching to the choir?”

 

He chuckles. “That’s it. And look, I know it bothers you you can’t let your kid see her dad. Trust me, it bothers me too. Can you just imagine how much it hurts Tony?”

 

She nods. “He’s told me.” Her voice softens and she can’t help the sadness that creeps up on her and Happy looks almost sad he’d brought it up. “Eventually, I’ll be able to come to the States, and bring Thandi along and then...well, I don’t want to get anyone’s hopes up for when that will be.” She thinks to the night before she left and her brother’s stern voice as he gave her the conditions of her vacation.

 

“It could be whenever you wanted, honestly.”

 

“I’ve been told not to even think into crossing the Atlantic,” but she hates to admit that she’s already got the seeds of a plan to sneak across plotting in her head.

 

“I mean, is he really gonna do anything if you do come over?” Happy asks. He looks almost conniving. It’s downright amusing, honestly. “Even if it’s for a few days, you know. I mean, what’s the worst that could happen? Your daughter gets to finally be around her dad and Tony gets a mood booster and everyone wins.”

 

“You make a fairly decent point,” she says, tapping on her kimoyos and glancing at her itinerary. She’d have to do this without alerting her Dora detail; part of her felt sorry about leaving them if it meant they’d get in trouble, but the part of her that really, really wanted to see Tony again won out.

 

“I suppose I could wiggle some time in New York into my trip.” She grins and Happy does as well. “I’ll need a friend on the inside, though.”

 

“Oh, you’ve got me, Princess,” he says cheerfully, and he pulls up a seat to begin plotting.

 

* * *

 

Thandi’s still asleep when she sneaks out of the hotel. She takes two bags; one for herself and one for her daughter and catches a red eye from Charles de Gaulle to JFK, using the tickets Happy had sent to her phone. She thinks about maybe leaving a note, but instead, she sends a text to the Dora detail and one to her mother and brother as well, telling them she’d had a slight change in plans and would be gone a few days and everything was fine.

 

The butterflies in her belly nearly ate her alive the entire time she was in the air, but she smothered them down with watered down cocktails and focused on keeping Thandi entertained when she woke up, a little confused, but excited to be moving again.

 

JFK is bustling and Thandi, thank Bast, stays close. She holds her hand in a vise grip and moves through the crowds of people with her bags on her shoulder, keeping her eye out for a tall, hefty man with dark hair and a scowl. He waits, posted beside a sign that gives directions to the rental cars and Thandi recognizes him first, calling out excitedly to “Hoagie.”

 

“So nice to be remembered,” he quips, smiling and nodding his greeting to Shuri. Thandi refuses to settle for a nod and insists on a hug, so Happy scoops her up and hugs her tightly, giving Shuri a bit of a break. Her unease at this side trip still thrums through her body and she’s a little wary of trusting Happy with Thandi while she follows beside them, but if Tony trusts him, then she figures she can as well. He lets Thandi babble as much as she wants and keeps up the conversation as well as he can, the toddler slipping in and out of Xhosa at random points and completely throwing whatever she was talking about off. Happy plays along well, though, and Shuri feels herself easing into something like trust when they finally get out to the car.

 

It’s one of Tony’s Audi’s, darkened windows and luxurious leather seats. Happy asks if they want to grab a bite first, since the drive from the city to the farm is three hours and some change, and so they pull in at a burger spot and grab cheeseburgers and fries.

 

“They have cheeseburgers in Wakanda?” Happy asks her, from where she sat in the front seat beside him. She watches outside the window as people pass down the street in the still warm September morning, headed to and fro. She wonders where everyone is headed, and what their stories are because it’s a lot less stressful than wondering what Tony would think of seeing her.

 

“Not officially, no,” she says, dipping her french fry in mustard and earning the oddest look.

 

“The only person on the planet I know who does that is Tony.”

 

Her smile is soft in spite of how much she wishes she were unaffected at the mention of him. “He’s the one that taught me.”

 

Happy shakes his head and turns the radio up a bit, and they leave the city behind them. Shuri talks a little about her work in the lab to pass the time and Happy tells her old stories of Tony, of some of their adventures together when they were younger, and about his work on the farm upstate.

 

“Farmhouse is comin’ along beautifully. He’s thinking of adding on cause there’s only two bedrooms and of course he’ll want somewhere to put his lab. I mean, he’s kind of got one already, but it’s not up to standard yet. Just kind of a hole in the ground.”

 

“He said he wanted to raise vegetables,” she says, and Happy nods enthusiastically.

 

“We’re gonna start next year. He’s looking at doing something easy at first and working his way up, and then hopefully we’ll have something going. Maybe even make a profitable crop. You should hear him talk about it, though. He’s always so giddy. And honestly, I can get why. Did you know there’s that many different kinds of beans you can plant?”

 

“I did not,” she says with a smile, finishing off the last of her watery soda.

 

The countryside out here is absolutely beautiful, with wide open spaces and rolling grassy slopes. Thandi naps during most of the ride but wakes about twenty minutes outside of the town of Gavinsdale, where Tony now lives. The farm sits on over 300 acres right outside the city limits and a mile down the road from a small gas station, where Happy stops the car and fills up the tank.

 

“He thinks I’m in Iverton getting groceries,” Happy says, when he slides back into the driver’s seat and cranks the car. Thandi wiggles excitedly for the bag of chips Happy hands her, his smile wide and almost too sweet. “I mean, there’s no reason I should be gone this long except to grocery shop.”

 

“Does it usually take most of the day to grocery shop?” she asks, and accepts the iced slushy he’d gotten her with a “thank you”. “Sounds like an hour or two job.”

 

Happy considers this for a moment and shrugs. “I honestly don’t know. Poor dude’s all wrapped up with this custody bullshit. He’s still trying to get more than a day or two whenever Pepper feels like it with his kid. I mean, yeah, he fucked up-” He turns his head to see if Thandi were paying him any attention, and noticing her deep into her bag of chips, blows out a sigh, continues. “Sorry. He screwed up, I should say, but that has shi- crap all to do with Jude.”

 

Shuri makes a face and lets the condensation of the drink drip down her hand. “I wouldn’t do him like that,” she says, almost under her breath, mostly to herself. If Happy hears, he doesn’t comment on it, but he hums and turns up a long, dirt road, slowing down so the bumps in the lane don’t jostle his passengers too much.

 

Great big trees line the driveway, gnarled and ancient, and they canopy the road so that the drive is cool and shady. A large, iron gate stands opened about a mile up the way and Happy drives through slowly, around the hill and up the lane another half mile more until the facade of a large house comes into view. Great, grassy pasture surrounds the house and to the left is an old, worn barn. A tall oak stands to the right, close to the curving pathway that leads to the front porch. People filter in and out with boxes and tools, and in the hustle and bustle, Shuri’s heart nearly leaps out of her throat.

 

“So let me go see where he is. Probably in the lab, if not there, his room. I’ll be right back.

 

Shuri nods and unbuckles Thandi from her car seat, putting her daughter on her hip and following the little eyes as they take in all the activity.

 

“What’s a-doin’?” she asks, and curls her fingers into her mother’s shirt, the way she did when she was unsure about something.

 

“Working on the house, I think. Do you remember when Mama put the new wing into the lab?”

 

Thandi nods. “Mmhm.”

 

“Sort of like that. Just...bigger.”

 

She shifts the girl on her hip and makes her way, slowly, up the walkway and pauses on the porch. Workers nod in her direction without any fanfare, as if it wasn’t unusual for Mr. Stark to have random people show up on his doorstep. And then she catches sight of a familiar face, alongside Happy, who was rushing to explain something, probably her.

 

“Shuri?”

 

Dark hair and scruff and glasses-she didn’t know he even wore them, but somehow she isn’t surprised--are the first things she sees and she smiles, wide and happy because it’s been a long time since she’s seen Bruce Banner.

 

“Surprise?”

 

“Oh my god, oh my-” He rushes out the door, much to Happy’s amusement, and down the porch steps to wrap her into a hug and for a moment, Shuri pretends the exile never happened and none of her friends had ever left Wakanda. “How the hell did you get here?!”

 

“Mr. Hogan. I mean, Happy. He says not to call him Mr.”

 

“Sounds about right.” In the crush of his embrace, Thandi begins to kick and protest, and Bruce pulls back with a shocked face, even more than he’d been upon seeing her. “Jesus, I...wow. Thandi?!”

 

Thandi brushes hair from her face and blinks at the new man curiously. “Hi!”

 

“Shuri. Holy shit, she’s…” She thinks she sees tears in his eyes, but she doesn’t comment on them, and when Thandi moves to slide off her hip, she lets her. Bruce crouches to meet the girl at her own level and holds out his hand, one that Thandi regards carefully before taking and smiling.

 

“I know you don’t remember me,” Bruce says in a rush, glancing up to see more workers with boxes, and moving out of their way, “but I was there when you were a baby. Like, you’re still a baby, but a _baby_ baby.”

 

“I’m three,” Thandi says proudly.

 

“You will be, in two days,” Shuri says, ruffling her daughter’s hair.

 

“Three years old. Where the hell did the time go?”

 

Shuri shrugs because her guess is as good as his. Bruce gets up from his crouch with a grunt and gestures for them to come in, rambling as he goes, the way he used to.

 

“Does he know you guys are here? He didn’t say anything about you coming to visit.”

 

“It’s a surprise, actually,” Shuri says, and Thandi hops around on her feet, because surprise was her favorite word.

 

“Surprise, surprise! We surprise Baba!”

 

“Exactly. All Happy’s idea, by the way.”

 

"Hoagie!" Thandi squeals, making a beeline for the man, who stood waiting in the foyer.

 

“Sounds about right,” Bruce says with a laugh. “God, he’s gonna flip his sh-”

 

“Language, Banner,” Happy says curtly, cutting him off. “If I can’t say it, you can’t either.”

 

Bruce scoffs, but acquiesces and walks with them up the stairs. He pauses, right as they clear the second floor and holds Shuri’s arm, his eyes earnest and open. “You look good. Both of you.” He seems almost nervous and at a loss for words and Shuri reaches out to hug him again. She’d missed him, even when he’d been angry at her about the affair, even when he’d been hesitant about holding Thandi. There was an innate goodness and kindness in Bruce that she’d been without for too long.

 

“Anyway...come over to the cabin if you want. It's right down the road. I mean, I don’t know how long you’re gonna be here, but Jane and I-”

 

“I heard about the wedding. Congratulations, Bruce.”

 

“I mean, it was so lowkey. We got married at the courthouse and came here and had brunch.” He laughs. “But I wouldn’t have it any other way. I mean, I didn’t want anything highkey and neither did she. She’s in Arizona with Erik right now, so you should totally come by when she gets back, uh...in a few days.”

 

“Hey, look, are you gonna hog her all day?” Happy asks, pulling Shuri and Thandi down the hall. It’s quieter up here, though there are still workers walking through the mostly unfurnished second story carrying boxes of what Shuri could only guess were clothes and knicknacks.

 

“Is he just now moving in?”

 

“Technically, no. He’s just now getting the chance to grab most of his junk and haul it back here, is all.” He holds out a hand to slow her, just as she hears voices in a large room near the end of the hall, and he peeks his head around the corner, then turns to her and grins.

 

“Showtime, Princess,” he whispers, and Shuri can scarcely breathe.

 

She pushes Thandi behind her gently and gives her a finger to the lips to keep her quiet, then follows Happy into the room while Bruce brings up the rear.

 

He’s talking about placement, from what she can tell, of what to put where, but she isn’t paying much attention because her eyes are glued to him. He looks the same as always, and his hair is just a tad longer, a little wavier, but nothing too different from weeks before when he’d last sat down and chatted via holo. And yet, there was something about seeing it in the flesh for the first time in three years that had her breath caught in her throat and her hands shaking. Thandi’s little hands curl around her leg and even she is quiet, probably completely puzzled at seeing her father in a different way.

 

“Are you done, or…” Happy starts, catching Tony’s attention but only barely. He doesn’t even glance up, keeping his eye on blueprints of the house and pausing long enough to scratch his head.

 

“I mean, I can be. I’m kind of in the middle of something, but sure, Hogan, I’ll help you take the groceries out the-”

 

There is a second, when his eyes catch hers, that everything in the world stops and nothing else exists and she thinks she’ll die because she hasn’t breathed in minutes. She can’t, though. It’s like someone has a grip on her throat and a hold on her heart and she can’t find anything witty to say, the way she’d planned to on the way to Gavinsdale.

 

“I’m gonna, um…” He gestures blindly beside him, to the man he’s talking to, who takes the hint and leaves the room with a quiet nod. And then Tony walks to her, slowly, his face a myriad of emotions so strong she thinks he might pass out. She feels like she will, herself. Her knees feel like jelly and if she didn’t have a three year old hiding behind her, she would have already collapsed.

 

“How?” His voice cracks, and he stands a touch away from her, and though everything in her screams to reach out to him, grab him, she can’t move.

 

“I snuck out,” she breathes, and then a grin splits his face and his hands meet hers like it’s the first time. It feels as though she’s been electrocuted, and she gasps when his fingers curl into hers and hold tight. Warm, and heavy, and right just like they'd always been.

 

“You snuck out of Wakanda to come see me?”

 

Shuri grins and shrugs. “Something like that. Well, I mean, technically, I was already out of Wakanda-”

 

“Right, right. And you thought to make a quick stop over?”

 

She nods and laughs and then she’s almost crying. The little hands on her leg squeeze tighter and a soft breath brushes across her bare calves, and Shuri shakes like a leaf because Tony still hasn’t seen her just yet, he still doesn’t know and…

 

“I decided to take a vacation, and I was supposed to only stick to Europe and parts of Africa and maybe Asia if I could sneak it in. But...well, it’s almost September 21st.”

 

Tony blinks and his mouth hangs open, and just as he’s about to ask what that has to do with anything, Thandi pops up from behind her mother’s legs and squeals.

 

“HAPPY BIRTHDAY, BABA!” she screams, laughing as she does and running to barrel into her father. Tony looks practically dumbfounded, until Thandi grasps his face and pats her little hands along his beard, inspecting him in the flesh for the first time.

 

“My baby,” he rasps out, and that’s when he collapses, knees buckling as he pulls away to hold Thandi close, disbelieving, his mouth open and eyes spilling over. “I’m asleep, right, this is...Hogan, I’m dreaming, I have to be.”

 

Happy’s voice is uncharacteristically soft. “Nah, boss. She’s here. They both are.”

 

Tony’s sobs wrack his body like a hurricane and Shuri falls to the floor with him, threading her hands through his soft hair, remembering how warm he is, how perfect.

 

“We’re here,” she whispers, leaning forward to kiss his temple as he pulls her close, too, and she cries along with him.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Shine So Bright](https://archiveofourown.org/works/18649990) by [Knightsbridge07](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Knightsbridge07/pseuds/Knightsbridge07)
  * [DARK OF NIGHT](https://archiveofourown.org/works/18759817) by [Knightsbridge07](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Knightsbridge07/pseuds/Knightsbridge07)
  * [COME UNDONE](https://archiveofourown.org/works/18820945) by [Knightsbridge07](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Knightsbridge07/pseuds/Knightsbridge07)




End file.
